A/N
Here it is – the post Edward-was-a-complete-ass chapter. Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me!
SPECIAL MEGA THANKS to coldplaywhore for being a fantastic Beta and giving me ideas and help along the way. You'll have her to thank once Edward redeems himself – she thinks I've made him too mean… maybe I'm just evil like that. THANK YOU times a million, cpw.
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. If I did, this fic would include vampires.
A million songs have been written about this. A million sonnets composed. A million plays, movies and operas dedicated to this one subject.
My heart was broken into more pieces than all of them combined.
I never imagined it would feel like this.
In the car on the way home I drifted in and out of consciousness as Emmett drove in silence and Alice sat with me in the back, my head in her lap as she stroked my hair.
I don't remember getting back to Forks.
I slept on and off for what felt like days until Alice dragged me from my bed, forcing me into the shower. "I love you, Bella, but I need you to snap out of this. Please, I am begging you," she begged as I sat on the floor of my shower, still fully clothed and not acknowledging a word she said. Rosalie helped her pull me out and together they dried me and redressed me as Emmett was left with the thankless job of carrying me back to bed.
None of them left my side.
I later found out I was practically catatonic for two days. It felt like a lifetime.
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Charlie never asked me what happened and I was thankful for that. He just came into my room once he had reached his boiling point, demanding that I get out of bed and go to school, otherwise he would ship me back to Sydney to Mum. I made him swear that he wouldn't tell her anything.
So I went to school.
I sat in class, took notes and did as I was told, all the while wanting to scream at the top of my lungs. The pain I felt was immeasurable.
The first time I saw him, it took everything I didn't know I still had within me to stop from collapsing again. As Alice led me into the cafeteria, my eyes were immediately drawn to him and I couldn't help but wonder about him. Was he as broken as I was? Did he have any idea what I was feeling?
As soon as I saw him, I knew the answer to all of that was a resounding 'no'. He was perched on the side of a table, with a gaggle of cheerleaders surrounding him. They were fawning over the black eye he had received by my hand. I wondered if anyone knew how he had received it and I sincerely doubted it.
He looked up for a moment and caught me staring at him. His eyes were as dark as they had been by the bridge, now accented by the purple bruising. His face was a façade, but I knew what truly lay beneath it. Stupid Bella, believing that a beautiful boy like that could have wanted you, I thought to myself angrily.
I turned and ran out of the cafeteria, running until I was buried within the forest surrounding the school and I couldn't breathe.
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"Bella, we need to talk about this." It took fifteen days and seven hours Emmett to finally ask. "Bella, please. What happened? What did he do to you?" His face was so tender, so concerned, I knew I owed him something, even if it wasn't the whole truth.
"Nothing, Emmett. It wasn't his fault," I stated stoically, knowing it wouldn't be enough, but I had no idea what I could say to alleviate the pain my brother was feeling on my behalf. He wasn't talking to his best friend; I had noticed that in school. Rosalie was spending more time here and supporting him. She was an angel.
"Bullshit, Bella. The two of you run away together in the middle of the night and we find you broken in a parking lot where he just left you? Please Bella... talk to me. Please," he begged, as his voice broke on the last word and I raised my head to look at him. My big brother was crying, because of me.
I pulled him down to sit on the couch next to me, trying to stall as I thought of what I could say to placate him. I didn't know what Edward had told the rest of them and quickly determined that maybe that was a good place to start.
"What did Edw… What did he say happened? Maybe I can fill in the gaps," I said quietly, still unable to bring myself to say his name. I couldn't even say it in my mind yet. The cuts were still too deep. Too fresh.
"He said that he needed to get away and asked you to go with him." True. "And that he needed to keep going, but you didn't want to, which is why he left you where he did." Lie. "Dad, Esme and Carlisle found him stopped in a café on the way out of town. Pretty stupid, if you ask me. I mean, they knew he was in the area. He should have kept going." Unless he wanted to be caught. He was done running, just as he was done with me.
"What I don't get is how this happened" he gestured to me, as if my entire being was confusing him. It probably was. "If it was as simple as he says, then why were you vomiting? Why have you been such a zombie? What the fuck happened out there, Bella?" he pleaded as I stared at my hands, trying to find enough truth to pacify Emmett, without giving him a reason to kill my heart.
"I didn't want to stop running either, Emm. I'm sorry, I really am, but I didn't want to stop running." I suddenly realised that Alice and Rose were both in the room when Alice handed me a tissue for the streams of tears that were rolling down my face. I tried to smile at them both, to let them know it was okay that they were listening. They all allowed me a few minutes to compose myself. I struggled to breathe when, for a moment, I allowed myself to imagine what it would have been like if Edward had let me keep running with him. If he hadn't left me, if he had loved me as I still loved him. Emmett was crying too, gripping onto one of my hands as if I would slip away if he let go. I felt as if I could.
It took Rosalie breaking the silence to remind me that I hadn't finished my side of the story yet. "Why did you want to keep running, Bella?" I looked down at her face, streaked with tears as well, resting on my brothers' lap.
Good fucking question, Rose.
"I don't know what to tell you. I guess it was because so much was changing." I struggled to get the words out between my sobs. "I know I came back all 'New-Bella', but I hadn't imagined how it would change everything else. Everyone was treating me differently. You guys were all sitting at a new table… things with Alice were so weird," I said softly, finding myself regretting the words as soon as I had said them.
Alice crawled onto the couch behind me, clinging to my back, sobbing a strain of apologies. "Please Alice, no. I didn't mean it like that." I reached the hand that Emmett wasn't clinging to behind me, grabbing onto hers. "I love you Alice, I am so sorry. It was my fault. I should have spoken with you more over the summer; I should have told you what was going on. It wasn't fair of me to spring it on you like I did." I hadn't even realised that I had been feeling this way until the words came flooding out. "I'm sorry, Alice. Please don't cry."
I could feel her pressing her face to my back, her tears seeping through my shirt. "I'm sorry too, Bella." She only whispered the words, but we all heard them.
I looked over to Rose and she nodded to me, urging me to continue. She was stroking Emmett's head as he laid it on our hands, obviously feeling guilty for his part in the changes at school. I felt awful for putting some of the blame on him, but it was better than him knowing the truth. I borrowed Rose's incredible strength to go on. "It wasn't just that. I don't even understand everything that was going through my head. I just didn't know how to process it all. Then when he told me I had to go back. I am so sorry, guys… I just didn't know what to do."
We all moved onto the floor in a tangled mess of limbs, clinging to each other for comfort, support and as a lifeline to the world. Things had gotten so messed up, so fast. We sat like that until the sun went down and a while after that too. We were much more composed when Emmett asked his final question. "If you didn't want to stop running, Bells, why did he leave you there?"
I couldn't lose it again. I knew that in order to protect my half truth I had to convince them that his leaving was not the reason for my breakdown. I also knew deep down that I was trying to protect him too. "He didn't want me to get into any more trouble. He thought that Charlie would be easier on me if he left me behind." It surprised me how easily I was able to twist the truth into a lie, but still have the truth remain within it.
Luckily, they all seemed to accept the reasons I had given them and no more words were spoken. It didn't explain why Edward and I weren't talking or why I couldn't say his name, but it was enough for them... for now. We all stayed on the floor until Charlie got home from work and I was the first to step away, going into the kitchen to start on dinner. Charlie's face noted his surprise at seeing me return to the routine.
Bella Swan is trying
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The pain wouldn't go away. The aching in my chest was unbearable every second of the day and was made even worse when I saw him. It was unavoidable, of course, since we went to the same school. Every time we walked past each other in the halls, I could feel the walls closing in on me and every time I saw him, our eyes would meet for a split second before he looked away. His always contained that same dark, unreadable emotion I had witnessed for the first time when he left me by the bridge. It was like each time I saw him, he was leaving me all over again and my heart broke into more pieces, if that was even possible anymore.
My days were filled with school, Alice, Emmett and Rosalie. Although it had seemed, before everything happened that Jasper and Alice were on the verge of something, but in the wake of everything that had happened he became Edward's new best friend. I felt awful for my friend, that my stupidity had caused her to lose her chance with him, but there was nothing I could do.
On the weekends, when the others let me out of their sight, I would lock myself in my room with my guitar. I poured everything I was feeling into my music, writing useless songs that never came close to expressing what I was feeling, but it was all I had to keep my emotions from exploding out of me. It was the most clichéd of releases, but it was all I had.
The nights were the worst, especially when everything was quiet. When Ali and Rose left for the night and Emmett and Charlie were in bed. When I was alone with my thoughts, my memories. When I was completely alone. I couldn't play my guitar for fear of waking my family up and found myself unable to breathe. I felt as though the pure force of the pain coursing through me would crush me whole.
It was in one of these moments that I snapped, running as quietly as possible into the dense forest surrounding the back of the house. I ran until my lungs were burning, collapsing to the floor in screams and sobs. I hoped I was far enough away from the house that no one would hear me as I pounded my fists and screamed until my voice disappeared. I screamed his name. It was the only time I could hear it, because it was the only time no one was near enough to see me crumble.
It became a nightly ritual.
As soon as I knew everyone was asleep, I would creep down the stairs and out of the house, eventually breaking into a sprint to the now familiar place of my solitude. On the third night, I discovered a tree all twisted and broken on the floor of the forest. It knew how I felt and I returned to it every night after that.
There was something so jarring about my screams shattering the silence of the forest at night. It was as if every living creature left me to my grief, my pain too much for them to bear witness too. I couldn't blame them. I wanted to run away from it too. But running away is what got me here in the first place. So I only did it a little. Every night.
I always made sure to return to the house well before the sun came up, just staying by my tree long enough to scream myself silent and bring on exhaustion. I don't know how I made it back to the house each night or into my bed for an hour or so of fitful sleep, but I did.
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It was two months, four days and twenty hours after my breakdown at the bridge that Emmett came barging into my room. "Get up, Bella. Surf's up and so are we. It's time to get back on the board, my little sister."
So it was that day that I found myself again, standing up on my board in my thermal wetsuit and gear, extremities freezing from the cold, blessing my brother. Most people would have thought this the craziest thing I had done since he had left me, but truthfully, it was the smartest. This is the one place that I always felt at peace, the one place where everything else melted away and all that mattered was catching the next wave.
My music may have given me the opportunity to vent what I was feeling, but surfing gave me a moment of peace. That single moment, each time I stood up on my board and rode the waves, where nothing else existed. It was heaven.
It was in one of these moments of clarity that I decided to stop.
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a
fire sparkling in a lovers' eyes;
Being vexed, a sea nourished
with loving tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A
choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
Farewell…
I was going to stop letting the 48 hours of confusion, passion and more confusion that was my time with him affect the rest of my life. It was time to stop now.
**… it's done. Move on**
I actually smiled for the first time in months on my way back up to the beach. Emmett was howling at the elements, echoing my feeling of release. He could see the change in me. I just needed to make sure it lasted past the break on the beach.
As we walked back up to Charlie, we realised he wasn't alone. I was surprised to see who was keeping him company, but not disappointed.
"Hey there, Sunday Surfer Girl. Welcome back."
A/N
Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1, spoken by Romeo to Benvolio
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