Disclaimer: I don't own anything publicly recognisable. Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and real people own themselves.
AN: I am EXTREMELY SORRY for the lack of updates - reasons at the end. SORRY!
Chapter 10 – EPOV
'...because the rest of the world seems be to hell bent on being as twisted and mixed up as possible...' Bella had definitely gotten that right and those words flashed before my eyes as I stood with Rose, waiting for the jurors to pile back in and deliver the verdict that everyone in this room had been waiting to hear since the beginning of this whole ordeal. I had absolutely no idea what exactly she was referring to within her own life, but it sure as hell fit in with what was happening in mine. I took a good look around at every face I could see and then had to shut my eyes again as I saw images of several women as young girls being terrorised by the man that still refused to take any kind of responsibility for his actions. Not for the first time, I wondered if people like Royce King had to tell themselves that what they were doing was acceptable in order to just be able to get up in the morning. I don't think I would ever comprehend how he could have just carried on with his normal life and pretended that he wasn't a sick bastard – how the guilt hadn't eaten him alive like it had done to Rosalie even though not a single part of it was her fault. Was there even a shred of humanity within the man that sat, still defiant, on the other side of the room?
Rosalie was twisting her hands in her lap, but apart from that, she hadn't moved at all since we had taken these seats. I, myself, couldn't help but let my eyes roam the crowd. There were reporters at the back of the room and artists sketching the scenes unfolding before them in lieu of cameras to capture the faces of the major players of this trial. I had avoided reading any news coverage on this case, simply because I was already working hard to get the images from a day in the courtroom out of my head last thing at night, I didn't need those memories to be triggered again. Rosalie avoided the news coverage for a whole other reason, I believed. I think she knew that there were still people out there who didn't believe her story and the story of the three or so other girls that had come forward. They were all now being judged, just as much as Royce King was – a fact that I absolutely couldn't even begin to comprehend, let alone accept.
Neither Rose, nor myself had gotten much sleep last night. We both retired to our respective rooms at around one in the morning, but I know for a fact that she was still pacing in her room at four thirty because I was sitting on the stairs watching her shadow move around under the door. I had thought she would come and talk to me eventually, or at least sneak into my room and make so much noise that had I been asleep, I would have had no choice but to wake up. However, she never even opened her door. As cowardly as it sounds, I was kind of glad that she didn't come to me – I would have had no idea what to say to her. I wanted to tell her that he would be put away for life and that no jury in the fucking world could ever convict him of being anything but guilty, but that wasn't always how real life worked. Justice wasn't always served and Rosalie had been failed by so many people and so many things in her life already – she wouldn't take kindly to me telling her that it would be different this time – especially if that turned out not to be the case.
Rose hadn't said anything to me this morning about what was about to proceed and I didn't know whether it was because she didn't want to think about it, or because she was trying very hard not to vomit with the nervous anticipation of it all. We hadn't exchanged more than the cursory 'good morning' over breakfast, but now as the heavy wooden doors that we had all been watching opened, she gripped my hand in hers tightly. She may have been strong and she may have been tough, but we both knew that this moment would define the rest of her life. It was disturbing that Royce King still had that sort of power over the incredible woman to my side, but apparently, he did and until a guilty verdict was delivered, he always would. My eyes slid over her face, but there was no emotion evident in the blue eyes that refused to look anywhere but at the twelve jurors that could change the lives of so many people in this room.
The preliminary chatter was just buzzing in my head as I waited with everyone else for the words that would rock not only this room, or the local community, but the entire country. A case of this magnitude went beyond the immediate area, went beyond the people that it affected – it gripped nations and I didn't doubt that every single person in Britain not only had an opinion, but had expressed it several times to their nearest and dearest. If I thought that the room was quiet before, it was nothing compared to the absolute silence that descended as the lead juror stood up, ready to speak the words out loud that would cause ripples to be felt for years to come. The time in which he finished speaking and then started to deliver the verdict must only have lasted three seconds, but it literally felt like a lifetime.
Guilty. Life in prison. The words rang out throughout the quiet room and over the hushed crowd like waves crashing on the smooth sand of the shore. For the longest time after the words had been spoken no one in the room moved and I was starting to think that I'd actually imagined the verdict in the time I was waiting for it to be read. Then all hell broke loose when King's wife started sobbing on the other side of the room. Cheers erupted, drowning out her distraught wailing and gasps resounded from all corners of the large courtroom. However, there was only one person's reaction that I was interested in and she had dropped my hand as soon as the more important word had left the juror's mouth.
Everyone around us was standing up and hugging each other with a joy that was brought about by the knowledge that justice, at least this time, had been justly delivered. Rosalie was still sat down, still staring at the place where twelve ordinary people had put away a monster, still completely silent. I was confused – surely she had just as much right as all of these people to rejoice over the fact that this bastard was finally getting what was coming to him. Actually, she had much more right than half of the people that were cheering right now because the majority of people that were making the most noise had not had their lives destroyed by Royce King. They were just here to witness the slaying of the dragon, as it were. Yet, there was no trace of joy or victory in Rosalie's features. In fact, there was absolutely no trace of emotion at all in her eyes.
"Rose?" I questioned softly, somehow trusting that she would hear the question that I wouldn't have been able to verbalise even without all the noise and celebrations going on around us.
She turned to me then and I saw it – the confusion, the hurt, the pain, the anger, the resentment, the joy, the relief, the victory and the guilt. Always the guilt. I had never known exactly what that haunted look behind Rosalie's ice blue gaze was; I had always assumed it was just a remnant of her unbelievably traumatic past, but now I knew that it was guilt. I had known, of course, that Rose, deep down, still partly blamed herself for what happened to her, but I had never connected that to the undefined emotion I saw within her every single day that I had known her. I felt like a fucking asshole in that moment – to not notice something to crucial about someone who was supposed to be my best friend.
"Rose," I said again, this time my voice understanding and comforting rather than puzzled. She tried to blink back the tears that were gathering and making her blue eyes darker, but she couldn't and by the time I had put both of my arms around her, she was sobbing into my blazer like she hadn't cried in years.
I understood what she was crying for now, what she felt guilty about. Even though Rosalie knew, on every level, that Royce deserved to rot in hell for all eternity, it didn't mean that she'd lost the compassion that made her who she was. She didn't want to rip a family apart – she didn't rejoice in having his kids be ridiculed by the world and shunned by those who they had once counted as friends. She had been on the receiving end of that and she wouldn't have wished that on anybody. This man hadn't just ruined the lives of the girls that he had terrorised, but he had ruined the lives of the people that he was supposed to love the most – the people that still loved him. Rosalie knew what this verdict would do to the innocent bystanders that had done nothing but put their trust in a man that had betrayed it horribly and she was grieving for that. Though she had every right to be joyous about the verdict, though she had more than enough reason to be popping champagne corks and proclaiming this to be the best day of her life, Rosalie couldn't be really happy when there were still so many casualties. I don't think I had ever admired anyone as much as I did Rosalie Hale in that moment.
*
I didn't see Rosalie again after we got out of the courtroom until she showed up at the house at night. She had begged me to let her go off by herself for a few hours because she really needed time to just think, just let herself get used to the idea that one of her greatest demons had been put to rest. I acquiesced because I got the feeling that Rosalie was a mixed up bag of emotions and she needed to get everything right in her own head first before she could even begin thinking about talking to anyone else about it. She would come to me in her own time if she needed me and I would always be there for her.
Whilst she was gone, I called Carlisle to tell him about the verdict and he too had mixed feelings about the whole thing, Of course he was relieved that the right decision had been made regarding Royce's guilt, but he also expressed concern about King's family and what would happen to his wife and kids, some of whom were only teenagers. There was no one within a ten mile radius of this case that was left unaffected and without their own wounds from it. Only one man was guilty, but the burden of his crimes fell on many. How was any of this fair? How had life come to this? When did everything become so hard and so complicated? Bella was right – the world was twisted and messed up and it seemed as if simplicity was ironically the hardest thing to find among the pandemonium.
Before I knew what I was doing, the phone was ringing and Bella's sleepy voice was sounding in my ear. I don't know what the hell had possessed me to call her, but I guess having too much time to think about the complexities of life made me want to talk to someone that was so far removed from this world that I'd been immersed in tha past week.
"Hello?" Bella said once more into the phone, her voice clearing of the sleep that I had obviously woken her from. "Edward?"
I glanced at the clock on the wall behind me and realised that it was very early in the morning over in LA and I had most probably woken Bella up for absolutely no reason. I just...I wanted to talk to her, find out what had been going on in her life to prompt the very insightful text message in the first place. I hadn't replied yet, unsure of what to say to express exactly how her words had pretty much summed up everything that had been going on in my life.
"Um...yeah," I said, my tone a little sheepish. I shouldn't have called her. I had no damn business calling her. She wouldn't appreciate my musings on life at six thirty in the morning. "Look, I'm sorry I called and woke you. I shouldn't have. I'll just...yeah, bye." I was about to press the 'end call' button, wishing that my embarrassment was that easy to shut off when I heard her call my name from the other end of the line.
"No!" she shouted. "It's fine Edward, really," she continued in a much quieter and calmer voice. "Besides, you've already woken me up. It would be damn annoying if we didn't at least have a two minute conversation out of this."
"Two minutes huh?" I asked, smiling. It was nice to have a conversation with someone that wasn't about anything of consequence – it was freeing and it allowed my mind to just rest for a while instead of running five hundred miles a minute. "Well, I guess I can spare that much money."
"I presume by that comment and that you're still on the other side of the pond?" she asked, her voice getting the teasing quality back that was very familiar. Sometimes I got the impression that Bella humoured me a lot and I didn't exactly know how to feel about that. I may have been older than her, but at times it kind of seemed like she had the upper hand in our friendship.
"I am indeed," I confirmed. "Though I should be flying back tomorrow."
"Shall I make a banner and hire a welcome committee to meet you at the airport?"
"A chauffeur-driven limo and a driver holding a sign with my name on it would do," I played along. She chuckled softly from the other end of the line and I was hit with a strong urge to go home. I loved London, but obviously this trip had taken a lot out of me and I was definitely ready to be back in America, even if it had to be LA. "Sorry I called you so early," I apologised again. "I didn't realise what time it was until you picked up."
"It's fine," Bella assured me, a smile still evident in her voice. "I've been asleep for about fourteen hours anyway. If I hadn't woken up soon, I'm pretty sure my Dad would have come around and thrown cold water over me."
"Fourteen hours? I guess all the sex, drugs and rock and roll is really getting to you Miss Swan," I teased. "And you're still only nineteen."
"Nineteen is practically ancient in this town darling," Bella drawled in a voice that would not have seemed out of place coming out of the mouth of a 45-year old woman who had smoked 30 cigarettes a day since she was 20. As it was, the throaty southern twang in Bella's voice surprised me and amused me at the same time. "To what do I owe this phone call to anyway Mr. Cullen?"
I shrugged before realising that she couldn't actually see me. "I just..." I trailed off, not knowing how to tell her that I just needed simplicity for a while and she always gave me that; always gave me a way to just clear the jumbled mess that was my mind. I sighed deeply – there was no way I could tell her that. "I just found your last text rather interesting," I said instead.
There was a pause before she answered and I wondered whether or not she had believed that I had called her at six thirty in the morning just to say that. I doubted it, but aside from the slight pause, Bella didn't acknowledge my strange reasoning at all. "Well, I'm rather an interesting person," she joked.
I laughed. "Maybe I'd believe you if I didn't know you," I countered, to which she made an indignant sort of noise and huffed loudly. "Anyway, what was that rather philosophical message about?"
Bella paused, cleared her throat and sighed before hedging her reply with a few 'umms' and 'ers'. Obviously she hadn't expected me to ask the meaning behind the message and it may have been over-stepping the invisible boundaries of our friendship, but I was intrigued about the message, more so now that she didn't have a quick, sarcastic answer to give me. Bella didn't strike me as the type of person who ran out of sarcastic quips too often – if ever actually.
"Come on Bella," I pressed. "This silence is costing me a fortune. I am but a struggling actor you know." That made her laugh a little, but I could tell even from thousands of miles away that she was still a little uncomfortable.
We spent a few more minutes in silence whilst I waited for her to tell me something real – something beyond the jokes and quips that we shared. "I...I had a very...it's been an interesting week or so for me without you following me everywhere," she started, the mocking tone in her voice at the end not entirely masking the uncertainty in her earlier words. "I had a lot of things going through my mind and a lot of alcohol making its way through my system."
"So I wasn't too far off with the sex drugs and rock and roll comment then?" I joked, knowing she would feel more comfortable with that than more questions. She had pretty much given me the answer that I was expecting – she was going through some shit in her personal life and she needed someone who wasn't a part of it to vent to. Obviously Bella and I regarded each other in the same way – a port in the storm that was real life.
"More like yachts, co-stars and plenty of tequila," she corrected. "Sorry if the message was a little cryptic Edward. I guess I didn't really think before I sent it."
I shook my head at the same time as I vocalised my answer. "Don't apologise for telling me what you think Bella," I told her firmly. "After all, if you can't vent via text message to your friend whose on the other side of the Atlantic, who the hell can you went to?" Her answering snort made me laugh out loud. "Besides, I completely understand where you're coming from." Bella had shared something less superficial with me; I only thought it fair that I should do the same thing.
"You do?" she questioned, her voice much more serious than it had been even for her own semi-explanation.
"I do," I confirmed. "I've had a rather...let's say eventful...week as well and I kind of have an answer to your comment."
"Pray do tell Edward."
I took a deep breath and said the thoughts that had been going around in my head since I had come back to the house without Rosalie. "Have you ever thought that maybe there is a purpose to the confusion? Maybe it's just part of the journey and it's part of what makes the trip worthwhile?"
There was a thoughtful silence from the both of us and I could tell that Bella was digesting my words and seeing how it fit into the issues she had in her own life. In time, I would ask her exactly what her week had consisted off and in time maybe she would tell me, but for now, I think it was nice for the both of us to know that even though the other person didn't really understand, they understood enough. Bella, unbeknownst to her, had helped me think over a lot of things with her comments – she always managed to put things into perspective for me even when I didn't know they needed to be put in perspective. I was just beginning to suspect that maybe I did the same thing for her.
"Thank you Edward," she said finally.
I didn't need to ask what for – I knew. "You're welcome Bella. I'll see you when I get back to LA."
"Yeah," she agreed. "Have a safe trip."
We hung up the phone at the same time and I was left with a sense of peace. Someone out there understood. I didn't myself know exactly what it was Bella understood, but I felt as if she did. I felt as if we had some unspoken common ground that neither of us could really define, but we both knew it was there. It was a very strange thing, but I wasn't going to question it. I had far too many things to question and worry about. I was just going to let this unknown thing be. After all, it wasn't exactly a bad thing right?
*
I was already getting ready to go to sleep when Rosalie knocked on the door to the room that I had been calling mine for the past week, though she didn't wait to be called in before she entered. She came over and sat down on the edge of my bed, not even bothering about the fact that I had still to put on a pair of pants over my boxers. Obviously Rose had seen me in less, but usually she had the decency to wait until I was only half naked to come into my room. She looked...well, quite honestly she didn't look much better right now than she did when she asked me to let her have some time alone. Her eyes were still red, no doubt from hours of crying and nights of not getting enough sleep. Rosalie didn't just look tired, she kind of looked defeated, which was not something that dreamed of using as a description for her today of all days.
For a long time, neither of us said anything. I sat down on the other side of the bed once I'd finally put on a pair of pants and faced her, waiting for a cue to speak. She just gave me a tight smile and continued to follow the intricate pattern her fingers were aimlessly drawing on the bed. There were many things that had to be said hanging in the air between us, but I doubted that either of us really knew what to say and where to start. I wanted to know how Rose was feeling, but I didn't want to push her. She may have wanted to talk about something completely different. She may have wanted a distraction from the thoughts that had no doubt consumed her for an entire day – hell, an entire week. So, as much as it pained me to sit there in silence and wait for her to be ready to talk to me, I did it, watching her carefully for any signs that she may have wanted me to start the conversation.
"I went to see the grave today," were the first words out of her mouth and had I not been sitting down, I would have probably fallen over in a very comical fashion. I hadn't expected that to be the opening sentence in any conversation I pictured us having now, or in the near future. If anything this trip had shown me that I didn't know Rose as well as I thought I did. There were many layers to this girl that I couldn't even begin to uncover – not that she would even really let me try.
I closed my mouth after a few moments, not wanting to drool on the bed sheets. She didn't look up at all to see my reaction, but I think that she heard the gasp that left my mouth involuntarily nonetheless. I didn't say anything, choosing instead to just let her go on because right now the thoughts in my head made very little sense to me – I doubted very much that I would be able to express them in a way that would make sense to anyone else.
"I didn't plan on it," she continued after a couple of minutes. "I was just walking around, trying to understand why I wasn't happier about the verdict, why I felt like I'd lost something and suddenly, I was on a train to Brighton and walking up on the hill that I'd put a little stone for him on."
I didn't know that Rosalie had built a small grave for the baby that she never had the chance to know. I didn't even know that she knew it was a boy. Really, the list of things I didn't know about her were growing by the day and I had to wonder if Rosalie had ever really let me know her at all. Was the girl that I lived with every day really the one sitting in front of me right now?
"I honestly didn't know what the hell I was doing until I was kneeling in front of it and just crying my eyes out," she confessed, swallowing thickly. I grabbed the hand that wasn't tracing small patterns and held it tightly in mine, offering the support that she would never ask for, but obviously very much needed.
"I thought I'd feel so different after the trial Ed," she told me, changing the subject somewhat. "I thought that as soon as a guilty verdict was read, I'd feel like Atlas finally shrugging the world off his shoulders. I just...I thought I'd be able to finally move on from all of this and now I'm kind of thinking that I never will."
The devastation in her voice, shining from her eyes broke me. Today was supposed to be the start of Rosalie's new life, free from the shackles of her past, but it would seem that she was more haunted by it than ever before. I didn't know what to do. I was so out of my depth here. I wanted her to be happy, to have the life that she deserved, something I believed she could have with the man behind her misery firmly locked away where he belonged. Now...well, now I wasn't so sure that it was as simple as having Royce locked up. Rosalie had been running away from her past for a very long time and it seemed that now she was being forced to face it head on, she was finding far deeper scars than she had been aware of.
"Rose," I started, unsure of how to even carry on. "It's okay not to feel like rejoicing that someone got sent to prison, even if he did completely fuck up your life and the lives of everyone else around him. It makes you a better person. It shows the huge difference between you and him."
She shook her head. "No, Ed, it doesn't," she argued. "You don't understand. I'm fucking ecstatic that Royce is rotting in jail right now. Hell, for the first time in my life I wished I was blood American so that he'd be being strapped to a table and being injected right now. I don't give a shit about his life Edward."
I furrowed my brows in confusion and shock. Rosalie had never agreed with the death penalty. In fact, she had said several times over that no civilised society should ever murder people, no matter the crime they had committed because the refusal to take another person's life was surely the ultimate thing that differentiated us from the monsters that we were judging. I was in complete agreement. I have never held the belief that we can be judge, jury and executioner. I was utterly at a loss for what to say right now at Rose's revelation. She really kept knocking them out of the park lately.
"I know it's terrible," she acknowledged. "I can't even begin to tell you how bad I feel for thinking that, but I don't take it back Ed and I won't apologise for it. That man ruined so many people's lives – not just his victims, but his family's. I really do think that the world is better off without people like that."
I didn't say anything – now was not the time to argue about the ethics of capital punishment. Besides, I would never tell Rose that she didn't have every right to want the man who robbed her of her childhood, who abused her for three years, dead. She did. I didn't know what it felt like to be in her shoes and I wasn't arrogant enough to think that I wouldn't feel exactly the same way if I had been in her situation.
"I do feel guilty," she continued, not really caring about whether I was replying to her or not. "I feel for his kids whose lives will be tainted by the bastard that their father was. He's pretty much fucked them over much like he did to me and the three other girls in that room. Hell, he probably fucked them over worse – I mean they have to live with the knowledge that there is a part of him within them right?"
"But more than anything really Ed, I just feel..." she trailed off and took a deep breath before continuing. "I feel simultaneously empty and extremely, extremely sad. I wish I could explain it, but I feel like I've lost something. I feel like I'm grieving and I really don't know what for. I thought I'd done all the grieving one person could do. I've had a lifetime of thinking about everything I've lost and everything I never got a chance to have. What more is there?" Rosalie was outright crying again as she finished the last of her words, but I got a feeling that she was crying more out of frustration than anything else. She pulled the hand that was still in mine away and wiped the tears falling down her cheeks angrily. She looked up at me for the first time since she got into the room and I felt a pressure upon me to say the right thing. My best friend was in a very fragile place at the moment and I was the only person here that could say or do anything to make her just that little bit less breakable – if I didn't completely fuck it up.
"You have lost something Rose," I reminded her. "Hell, you've lost quite a lot and maybe this is the first time that you've actually taken time to let yourself feel it. Before there was so much anger, so much need to fight for that bastard to be locked up behind bars and now that he is...well, now you have to start the process of moving on with your life. The end is just the beginning Rosalie. It may be a complete cliché to say it, but the rest of your life really does start now."
"The end is just the beginning huh?" she repeated, the corner of her mouth twitching up a little as she attempted to smile at me. It turned out more like a grimace, but I appreciated the fact that she was at least willing to even try smiling right now. She took a deep breath. "Okay, so where the hell do I go from here?"
I snorted at her assumption that I would have any sort of answer for that particular question. The shit that was happening in my own life was far less complicated than what was going on with Rose and I couldn't even sort that out. I found it slightly laughable that she would expect me to have the solution to her problems, no matter how much I wanted to give it to her. She looked at me strangely and then nodded her head in understanding not a moment later. For the first time in a while, I think we both acknowledged the fact that we had spent years searching for ourselves only to find that we still didn't know where the hell to even start looking. It would have been a little funny if we weren't both so fucking drained of any kind of happy emotion right now.
"I think you may have started off on the right foot today," I told her after a while, encroaching on a topic that I wasn't sure she was really ready to talk about. Her eyes flashed with an emotion I couldn't quite catch and she was off the bed and walking to the door before I even knew what was going on.
"Good night Ed," she said in a tone that would have told me to leave well enough alone even if she hadn't shut the door rather forcefully behind her as she walked out.
I blew out a breath and fell face forward onto the now empty bed before me. Rosalie was giving me whiplash with her changes in mood and topics of conversation. She had obviously opened up the topic about the baby she had miscarried, but now she didn't want to even entertain the idea of talking about it. Of course, it was her prerogative to change her mind when it came to discussing this particularly painful topic, but I wish she'd give me fair warning as to when it was and wasn't the right time. I knew that she would need to talk about the baby soon and maybe I wouldn't be the person she would talk to about it, but I wanted to be the person that at least made her realise that she was just putting off the inevitable and was ultimately going to make it worse.
I flipped over and gazed up at the ceiling without really seeing anything for a long time and then suddenly, I was being woken up by a loud blaring somewhere to the left of me. It was several moments before I actually understood that the obnoxious noise was my alarm clock. I had fallen asleep without even knowing it last night, somewhere between wondering whether I could leave Rosalie for the next few months and planning some way I could make her come to the set with me without making it seem like it was my idea to watch over her, I had slipped into a rather restless sleep. I looked at the now silent alarm, which was proclaimed that the time was 10:30. Rosalie and I needed to be at the airport in less than two hours and neither of us had even thought about packing. I sprang off the bed and ran into the shower, shaking off the sleep that was still wrapped around my tired brain.
I was dressed and packed with thirty minutes to go until we had to leave, but I hadn't heard a peep out of Rose since she walked out of my room last night. I found myself knocking on her closed, heavy wooden doors, wondering what kind of mood I would find her in. She called for me to come in and I was astounded by the fact that it looked as if Rosalie hadn't even attempted to pack. She was sitting in front of a desk, dressed for the day, but all her clothes and belongings were still strewn around the room. Normally Rose would have to tell me to get my shit together and then end up 'helping' me pack by throwing all the clean clothes she could find in my room into a bag.
"You are aware that we have to leave in about thirty minutes right?" I asked, wondering what she was actually doing on the laptop that she was still facing.
She shook her head at me. "No Edward, you have to leave in about thirty minutes," she corrected and I felt my jaw drop at the implication. There was no way she would be staying here. "I'm going to stay for an extra week."
"Not a chance Rose," I said before I could really think any better of it.
Rosalie spun around so fast on the chair that I didn't entirely catch the movement, but I did see the daggers she was sending my way with her hard blue eyes. Rosalie Hale did not like being told what to do – or not do in this case. Even if she hadn't been thinking of staying behind, the fact that I'd just told her not to would have pretty much made her mind up for her.
"What was that Edward?" her voice had a dangerous lilt to it, warning me to tread very carefully lest I not value my manhood.
"I said you're not staying here," I repeated, rising to the challenge that she had thrown down. Obviously I didn't value my ability to make children very much or I would never be baiting the beast as I was now. "You can't possibly expect me to hop on that plane and just leave you here by yourself after all the shit that's happened over the past week."
"I must have missed the part where you became my fucking father Ed," she spat out. "Next time, leave me a voicemail and I'll know who to consult every time I have to make a decision." She turned her back to me again and continued tapping away on the laptop, though I doubted she was actually doing anything more than beating the shit out the keyboard. Well, it was better than her doing that to my face.
I walked further into the room, not taking the hint that she wanted me to leave her the hell alone right now. "You know that's not what I meant," I argued. I guess I was losing all sense of self-protection at the moment. "You can't possibly expect me to leave you here alone when I know some of what you've gone through this week and I know what this place does to you. What kind of friend would I be Rosalie?"
She shook her head and faced me again, eyes much softer and her face looking less like she wanted to kill me. "You're not being a bad friend Edward," she assured me. "You're realising that I'm a grown woman who can make perfectly sound decisions regarding her life. You're respecting those decisions and trusting that I know what I'm doing?"
"Do you?" I asked, still unwilling to let this matter lie. I didn't want her making rash decisions based off the many emotions she was still feeling right now. Emotive decisions were not always rational and they certainly didn't always go so well.
Her eyes blazed indignantly for a fraction of a second before they were soothing once more. "Look, last night you said that I needed to start the rest of my life and leave all this crap behind me and you're right, I do. But I in order for me to put this chapter of my life away, I have to put it all away, not just the Royce part. There are still so many loose threads of this tale to tie up Ed," she explained. I knew that she was talking not just about the baby she had lost, but also the parents who had cast her away.
"I'll stay," I offered, knowing that my doing so would mean that I would be giving up the role that I had so badly wanted to get. Yet, movie roles weren't real and Rosalie was – our friendship meant a great deal more to me than doing this film. Besides, I wanted to be there when she saw this thing to the end. I wanted to witness her triumphant moment because nobody deserved one more than Rosalie and to be honest, I wanted to see that there was actually some sense of fairness in the world.
She shook her head and took my hand. "No you won't," she countered and I was just about to open my mouth to argue when she started speaking again. "Look I appreciate the fact that you'd walk away from this film for me, really I do, but it's not necessary and I don't want you to do it. You've already done enough by being here with me this week. I need to do some of these things on my own Edward. You can't be with me all the time. You can't keep saving me."
Was that what I'd been trying to do? Was I trying to be the knight in shining armour that Rosalie so deserved? I didn't know, but she was obviously ready to go this alone and she didn't want me to be here. Still, it didn't exactly sit well with me that she'd be without someone on her side whilst she dealt with a lot of people that had torn her to pieces for several years. I told her as much and she completely blind-sided me by telling me that Esme, of all people, was flying in within a day or two to help her out with some things. I wondered at her choice of support system, but Rosalie only told me that Esme understood in a way I never could and that it was a story that I would have to find out from the woman herself.
So at twelve thirty in the afternoon, I stood at a check-in desk at Heathrow airport with my bags and without my best friend. I still wasn't entirely comfortable with the fact that Rosalie was staying in London, but obviously she had a journey to go on that I couldn't be a part of. I had to wonder if I had a similar kind of trip ahead of me.
*
BPOV
Being woken up at six thirty in the morning after a day of basically doing nothing but recovering from a mighty hang over was not the greatest start to my day. If anyone else but Edward had called me that early, I would have actually just put the phone down, but I supposed I could give him a break since he was operating in a completely different time zone to me. Our conversation was completely insane – going from teasing and light-hearted one minute to some serious reflecting the next. It wasn't until I actually got off the phone with him that I realised that was pretty much the first time we'd had a conversation that actually hinted at something else in our lives beyond that we had each shown the other. It was extremely off, but I kind of got a feeling around Edward that he just...he understood things about me that I didn't myself have insight into. I felt like he 'got me', whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Sometimes when we talked, I got this feeling that he understood something that I wasn't even aware I was telling him. Far from freaking me the hell out, I found it kind of freeing. It was nice that there was someone else in the world who understood the chaos that was my mind, especially since the majority of the time I had trouble deciphering it.
It was odd how close Edward and I were getting from a distance of nearly six thousand miles. Strangely enough, sometimes I felt a lot more comfortable talking to Edward on the phone, or via text, than I did when we were actually together. There was something disarming about the man that made me question myself whenever I was around him. It was still there when I wasn't around him, but it was a lot easier to gather my thoughts when he wasn't looking at me. Edward confused the hell out of me and I didn't know whether to be intrigued or frightened by that fact. Did I want to be confused? I didn't think I did, but it was kind of fun to be kept on my toes all the time, whether or not Edward knew he was actually doing that.
This morning's conversation gave me something to think about, as it seemed all my trans-Atlantic conversations with Edward were prone to doing. He pointed out that maybe the complexity of life was just part of the voyage one had to go through to make everything worthwhile. If everything came so easily, how the hell would anyone ever appreciate the end result? How this applied to my Mom and me, I didn't have a clue, but at least I could find comfort in the fact that maybe this was not the be all and end all of our relationship. Maybe years down the line, we'd look back on this time and laugh at how distant we had once been towards each other. Well, that's kind of what I hoped anyway. The only problem was, I didn't know the steps to take that would get us from where we were now to where we could be in the future.
I lay in bed for a solid hour and a half thinking about the whole situation between my mother and I and what on earth I could do to even begin to rectify it. The one big problem I had was that I didn't exactly know what I needed to fix. I knew that at the moment, we were on either side of a wedge eerily similar to the Grand Canyon, but I didn't know how the wedge got there in the first place. Was it something I did or something she did? Was it even a question of fault? I didn't have a solid place to start to repair the damage that had been done between us, but this was probably the first time in a long time that I really wanted to get to the bottom of things. Two days ago, Renee had more or less taken the first baby step towards regaining whatever it was that we had lost. Surely it was now my turn to offer an olive branch.
Having made a decision, I grabbed my cell, which was still lying next to me where I had left it after my conversation with Edward ended. I dialled the second number on my speed dial and hope to god that my boyfriend would understand why exactly I was skipping out on the plans that I myself had made with him today. I was originally planning to take a hike and have a picnic with Jacob at the spot where we'd had our first official date, but I figured that right now, I had more important things to do. Not that Jake wasn't important to me, but my mother had been in my life for far longer than Jake had and it was that relationship right now that I really needed to concentrate on. Besides, Jake and I were fine now. We'd spent a lot of time together and talking openly about the problems our relationship had been having lately.
"Hey babe," Jake greeted before a yawn broke free from his mouth.
"Hey, sorry did I wake you?" I remembered that it was only around 8 o'clock after all and that had Edward not called me at an unreasonable hour, I would have probably still been asleep myself. I really should have thought about that before making this phone call.
"Yeah," Jake admitted. "But I'm sure I can find a way for you to make it up to me later." His voice was suggestive and I felt about ten times worse for the news that I was going to give him.
I took a deep breath and just prepared to tell him the truth. "I think I may be making a lot of things up later," I started. "I kind of have to cancel our plans today."
"What?!" Well, he certainly didn't sound either tired or horny now. Pissed and confused would probably cover it though. "What do you mean you have to kind of cancel our plans today?"
"Well, by kind of I mean completely," I confessed finally, steeling myself for the shouting I was sure would come. Jake had a temper issue, for sure. Not that he'd ever hit me or anything, but he shouted a lot for about half a minute before he calmed down and everything was once again okay. He had a very short fuse, but he was completely harmless and he never held a grudge. Case in point, his forgiving me so easily for lying to him for months about the whole moving in together thing.
"Are you actually going to give me any kind of explanation in this conversation Bella, or do I have to wait three months before you give me the details?" Okay so maybe he wasn't as over the whole co-habiting thing as I thought.
"Jesus, just chill the fuck out Jake," I tell him firmly because even if I did deserve to do a little more apologising and making up, I also had a very short fuse and I didn't exactly appreciate the passive aggressive comments he was making right now. "I'm cancelling because I have to talk to my Mom about some things alright?"
That shut him up. For a long while neither of us said anything and I could tell just from the silence that Jacob was not only surprised by my revelation, but also feeling about two inches tall right now. Good! He should feel that small. I wouldn't feel bad about wanting to take steps to recover my relationship with the woman that gave birth to me. If I had to cancel plans with my boyfriend for that to happen, I was going to cancel plans with my boyfriend.
"Christ, I'm such a fucking idiot," Jake said finally. I said nothing to disagree with him because he acted like a fucking idiot. "I'm sorry Bella. Of course you should cancel our plans to talk to your Mom. Why the sudden plan of action?"
I took a deep breath, calming myself down and talking myself out of the irrational need I had to just put the phone down on him. Sometimes, I still kind of got the urge to act like a spoilt, spiteful fifteen year old, but most of the time, I reeled it in. "She started talking to me yesterday," I tell him for the first time. I didn't really have much of a chance yesterday to tell Jake about the very strange conversation my mother and I had on the driveway. Between his teasing me about getting piss drunk with Alice and me just begging to be put back into bed, we couldn't find time for meaningful conversation. Not that I would have been able to have any kind of meaningful conversation yesterday anyway, whether or not I was awake.
"I didn't think she'd stopped talking to you?"
"I don't think 'pass the salt' counts as talking when she's my mother Jake," I tell him, sarcasm pouring forth before I could stop it. "I mean she tried talking to me about something other than what was going on around the house or my father or Sam. She actually asked me whether I was okay after she saw us fighting the other night."
"Oh, she saw that huh?" he asked and I knew right away that he wasn't exactly glad about the fact that my mother had witnessed something like that. He already knew she didn't exactly have warm and fuzzy feelings towards him – she definitely didn't need any more ammunition.
"She saw the after effects and put two and two together to make four," I told him. "Anyway, the point was that she actually attempted to talk to me and I thought I'd strike whilst the iron is hot, so to speak."
"What exactly are you going to say to her?" Jacob asked. It was a very simple question, but I had absolutely no idea what the answer was. I had no idea what I should even say to her, I only knew that I really had to try talking to her again. I got the feeling that if I didn't take this opportunity, I wouldn't have another for a very long time.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I just...I need to do this Jake. If nothing else, I need answers as to what the hell was supposed to have happened between us. I really...I kind of want my Mom back and I know that sounds like such a childish thing to say-"
"No!" Jacob protested strongly, so strongly in fact that I had to hold the phone a few inches from my ear to prevent the perforation of my ear drums. "No. It's perfectly understandable that you want your relationship back with your Mom Bella. Never beat yourself up for that. It doesn't matter how old we are. Our parents are our parents. We never stop needing them or wanting their approval."
"I guess," I agreed, knowing he was completely right. Jacob and his parents kind of had the relationship that I'd had with mine years before. "Anyway, I just want to know what happened really Jake, so that I can start making things right again." It wasn't really that I wanted my mother's approval of my life and how I led it; it was just that I wanted her to be a part of my life and I wanted to be part of hers. I hated the feeling that we were now strangers, that when I finally moved out of the house, we'd have no reason to interact on a regular basis. Maybe that was part of the reason why I didn't want to move in with Jacob yet, why I didn't really want to leave my childhood home.
"I understand babe," he assured me and although I had no doubts that he did, it wasn't the same as with Edward. I hated myself for thinking it, for comparing the comprehension my boyfriend had of my life with someone who I hardly knew myself. Yet, I couldn't help it as the thought crossed my mind and nor could I deny it. Jacob may have understood what I was trying to do, what I was trying to tell him, but he couldn't understand the things I couldn't express. I guess it was unfair of me to expect him to. I always hated girls who expected their boyfriends to be mind readers when they were unhappy with something, but I guess it was just too easy to make the comparison between the two conversations I'd had with two very different people in my life.
I ended the call with Jake quite quickly after the subconscious comparison I'd made between him and Edward. Whether it was out of guilt or frustration at myself, I didn't exactly know, but I felt about a million times worse when Jake told me that he was just a phone call away should I need him. That man really was too good to me especially right now when I seemed to be having more issues than the LA Times. Our relationship was very one-sided these days and I didn't know how to redress that balance. It wasn't like I loved Jake any less than he loved me, or any less than I used to, but I guess I'd been letting other things get in the way whereas Jake had always put me – had always put us first. Still, it wasn't exactly like I could be expected to put my boyfriend before the woman who carried me in her womb for nine months before enduring a painful twelve hour delivery so that I could be introduced to the world.
I knew my Mom would be alone in the house today – today was her 'meditation' day. My Dad would be out of the house by nine in the morning to get to work and my brother was still in Washington even though his semester was finished. Today, my Mom usually did a few bits of housework and then spent the rest of the day having some 'alone time'. This usually consisted of taking a very long bath with fragrances and oils that my father couldn't stand the smell of before doing yoga in the living room for an hour. She would then start cooking dinner, something fantastic that my father would think she bought, but I knew she really spent two hours working on. I knew this because it's what we did together when I was still fourteen and we still had a relationship beyond awkward exchanges on the drive. Back then, we both very much looked forward to these days together because with the time I spent away from home, this was one of the little things that just reminded me that I was still a kid; I was still part of a normal family.
I figured the best time to go to her would be just after her relaxing bath, but before the yoga. I didn't want to go before she'd had time to relax, but I didn't want my father to know about this little meeting either so I didn't want to interrupt her plans for dinner. It wasn't as if my Dad didn't know that my Mom and I were having problems, but he wasn't one to force the issue and he definitely didn't want to get in the middle of the two of us. My father wasn't exactly the most present parent of the household. It wasn't that he wasn't there for Sam and I when we needed him, just that we'd kind of grown up without Dad noticing we had. My father was a script writer and for the past few years he'd been the head script writer for a TV show and even when he wasn't in the office, he would spend a lot of his time working alone. He was always available when we had problems, he was just never the main port of call – well, until about three years ago anyway. These days my father and I had a much closer relationship and he'd been subtly encouraging me to talk to my Mom for a while, but he'd never pushed and I had been grateful for that once upon a time. Now, I kind of wished he had pushed me into it because surely this would have been easier earlier on, when there wasn't three years of confusion on top of the initial insult.
It was one thing to make up my mind of when I would go, it was quite another to know what to do with myself whilst waiting for the 'perfect' time. In the three hours that I spent waiting for the right time to talk to my Mom, I cleaned every single inch of my apartment and read every script that I had been neglecting of late. I answered every email and listened to every voicemail and I was still left with thirty minutes just twiddling my thumbs and trying not to talk myself out of actually having the conversation I was already three years too late in having. Walking through the back door of my own house was more nerve wracking than any audition I'd ever done. My stomach felt as if it was being put through a wringer and my palms were so sweaty, I was actually surprised I could turn the knob in order to open the door. My mother would be in the living room, just about to set up for her yoga session. She didn't hear me as I approached and I had to clear my throat to make her aware of my presence.
She turned around with surprise all over her face, which increased even further when she saw me standing in the doorway. It had been a long time since I'd willingly sought out her company and an even longer time since I joined her today of all days. However, before she could question my appearance there and shatter all the confidence and bravado that I was displaying right now, I told her that we needed to talk.
"What about Bella?" she questioned, her voice tight and her eyes evasive. She was obviously as uncomfortable about this as I was which made me feel infinitely better and much more nervous.
"You know what about," I insisted. She glanced at me briefly before shaking her head and turning around to face the TV. That just pissed me off. I wanted to talk about something important, something that may or may not salvage our relationship and she couldn't even look me in the eye. "I just want some answers Mom. I feel like we're both walking on egg shells around each other and I have no idea why? When the hell did you stop being my mother?"
Renee turned to look at me so quickly that I actually took a step back even though we were on opposite ends of the room. Her eyes were burning into me and I suddenly felt like a naughty five-year old that had been caught colouring on the brand new white walls. "When did I stop being your mother?!" she breathed out, her nostrils flaring and her face flushing a very unattractive red colour. "I never stopped being your god damn mother Bella; you just stopped caring that I was. You suddenly decided one day that you didn't need me anymore and then I just stopped existing to you. You didn't care one bit about my opinions Bella. You didn't want to hear what I had to tell you anymore. So you come here and ask me when I stopped being your mother? When the hell did you stop being my daughter?"
I heard the words she was saying to me, but I didn't understand them. I thought I had a vague idea of how this meeting was going to go. I didn't think either of us really knew what had happened between us and maybe that was still true, but my mother sure seemed to think that this was my fault. I tried to wrack my memory so that I could match her accusations up with my past actions, but there was nothing in my head except for the words she had said. When did I stop being her daughter? Had I stopped? Was I such an awful person that I had shut my Mom out of my life without even realising it and then tried to blame her for it? I thought this talk would give me answers, but it had so far left me with just more questions – questions that I didn't really want to ask myself. I didn't say anything, merely looked at her, eye brimming with tears I didn't want to shed. I saw Renee's anger abate to be replaced with something very similar to defeat, but more in keeping with despair and I felt as if a knife was being driven into me.
In the three or so years that my mother and I had stopped having any kind of relationship, she had never looked at me in the way that she was doing now. She was looking at me like I was a stranger, like I was someone she no longer knew. It was a pretty shitty feeling when your own mother – the woman that gave me life – was looking at me like she no longer knew who I was. How the hell was I supposed to know myself when she didn't know me anymore? I felt like I was watching someone else's life unfolding before my eyes, not living my own. What the hell had happened here?
"When you first started in this business Bella, I was so scared that not too far down the line you'd forget who you really were and what your father and I taught you was important," Renee recounted, her quiet voice clear in the silent air between us. "I was so proud that you managed to go so long without it affecting you, but I was wrong. You changed before my very eyes and it wasn't until I saw blatant proof of it myself that I realised it. I just don't understand what happened to you Bella. I didn't understand then and I still don't understand now." Renee's voice broke on her final words and tears slipped out of her eyes, but rather than being upset right along with her, I was just confused as hell. I didn't have a clue what it was she was alluding to.
"What are you talking about?" I asked her finally, biting my tongue to keep from calling her Renee. Obviously calling my mother by her first name would not do anything to dispel her belief that I didn't regard her as a parental figure any longer.
Renee let out a snort of laughter and brought her eyes up to meet mine. I was shocked at what I saw in them – pain, acceptance and blatant disappointment. "I heard what you said to Kyle Ludlow three and a half years ago Bella. I heard the entire god damn conversation."
All the air in my lungs left them immediately. I felt as if a truck had just ploughed into me and if I hadn't already been leaning against the wall, I may have stumbled back several steps.
Oh fuck.
AN: Okay, so once again, I apologise for the complete lack of updates for the past couple of months. I would have posted a note explaining why, but I really hate it when people update with a note and I think it's a real chapter, so yeah. Anyway, the explanation (because there are no excuses) is that I was in the last year of my degree and my dissertation and my finals took away my life for a bit - seriously, there are friends I haven't seen in months who think I've just vanished from the face of the earth. It was all worth it though because I got my results and I am VERY HAPPY with the outcome. So, yeah, I am sorry (again!) and I hope you are still reading this and enjoy this chapter and the progression of the story. Obviously Edward is heading back to LA and he and Bella will be reunited, but they have such a long way to go yet. Sigh....