Disclaimer: I don't own anything publicly recognisable. Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and real people belong to themselves - no infringement intended.

Chapter 12: EPOV

It was not going to be a good day. That was the first thing that ran through my mind as I woke up this morning, my head feeling like there was a woodpecker somewhere inside my skull. I had drunk far more than I intended to last night owing to the fact that I had suddenly realised that I was attracted to my co-star. How very fucking Hollywood of me. Carlisle had tried incredibly hard to snap me out of it and the combination of his words and the massive amounts of alcohol that I consumed slowly made me come to the conclusion that it was nothing to worry about. Of course I would be attracted to Bella; she was gorgeous, intelligent, witty and equal parts confident and vulnerable. I was a man and I would venture to say that there were very few men, if any at all, who wouldn't find her attractive. It was no big deal. It wasn't like I was thinking about dating her or anything. Quite apart from the fact that she already had a boyfriend, she was not only my co-star, but my 18-year old co-star. She may have been extremely mature for her age with life experience that rivalled someone ten years her senior, but the fact remained that Bella was still a teenager – a fucking teenager! I was glad Rosalie had not been there last night to witness my realisation because she wouldn't have stopped ragging on me about it and she would definitely not have calmed me down in the way Carlisle did.

I only hoped that I could get past the whole attraction thing quickly, or if not get past it at least not let it affect the way I interacted with Bella. I didn't want her to feel weird around me because I genuinely did like spending time with her as her friend. Beyond the extremely confusing mood swings sometimes, she was very fun to be around and I guess I kind of liked that she was a little hard to read – it certainly made being around her interesting. I had decided that maybe being attracted to Bella wasn't such a bad thing when I was supposed to be playing a guy absolutely and hopelessly in love with her character. Surely it would just add to the chemistry on screen and that was only good news for the movie. Yes, this whole thing was actually rather a good thing and the only reason I was so confused about it last night was because it surprised the hell out of me and knocked any kind of rational thought out of my head.

I was in a much better mood when the driver knocked on my door this morning to take me to the studio. I briefly wondered where Bella was, but she had said that she was doing something with Alice very early this morning, so I guess they were going to come in together. It was probably better that I see Bella first thing this morning in a work professional capacity rather than a friendly capacity, just to prevent the confusion that enveloped my rational mind last night. I was rehearsing a lot of the band scenes this morning and then going back to the studio this afternoon so record the five other songs that they wanted me to. I hoped that it would take me a lot less time to record the remaining songs now that I knew what to expect from a studio session because I didn't really want to spend every afternoon this week in the recording studio. I wasn't a professional musician and I would much rather be on the set running lines with everyone else, though I did appreciate the fact the music was extremely important in this film. Not as important as it would have been had this been a story solely about Rob's music, but there were definitely changes in his music after the period he was supposed to have become involved with Kristen. The most crucial part about the whole thing was that it remained true to the character and the songs that still touched millions, even after his death.

The first scene I was rehearsing today was the only time in the movie that Rob comes face-to-face with the man that Kristen eventually marries. It was a scene that had been placed in the movie without ever having been referenced in the poem. In his piece, Rob had never alluded to meeting his rival for his love's affections, but rather talked in great detail how he watched him from afar and wished for just a moment to be him. He wrote about how he wished that he could be in the other man's place for just a moment and experience what it was like to take her in his arms for the world to see; to be able to bask in her love and know it was right for them to be the most important thing to each other. In the script, the two meet before the period that Kristen was engaged to Timothy, but after it was made clear by her parents that she was expected to marry the guy. I would have to ask Esme whether this meeting actually ever took place and if the outcome had been as tame as it played out on the page right now.

I was wandering around the set looking for either Sue or Ben so that we could run through this scene and get some direction on how she wanted it played, when I saw Bella walking out of the sound stage that was being used as Kristen's house. She looked startlingly different to how I remembered her looking last night, with her hair a much lighter brown, shorter and straighter than normal. Obviously that thing that she had to do with Alice at six this morning involved her transforming from Bella to Kristen. I watched her walking in my direction with her head down so she couldn't see me and had to admit to myself that she looked much better with the long, deep brown hair that she had been naturally born with. Kristen was pretty, sure, but Bella was...well, maybe I should stop thinking shit like that because otherwise, I would be back to where I was last night when I decided that beer was no longer enough and I had to start drinking shots.

She was only about a hundred feet from me when she looked up and saw me watching her, though I hoped it didn't look like I'd been standing there the entire two minutes it had taken her to close the distance between us – even if that was precisely what I had done.

"Hey Edward," she greeted, stopping just in front of me. "When did you get here?"

"About ten minutes ago," I informed her. "I was just looking for Ben or Sue. I don't suppose you've seen them around?"

She shook her head of freshly dyed hair and I had to admit that the way the light was hitting it at the moment, made it look quite luminescent. I caught myself once more before the thoughts could go any further. I really needed to stop thinking of how attractive Bella was otherwise, it could get very difficult to separate my feelings as Robert to my feelings as Edward. The difficulty of detaching oneself from the mind-set of the character he/she was playing was precisely the reason that a lot of actors ruined their real relationships by having an affair with their co-star. It was also the reason why the cast of a TV show couldn't seem to stop mirroring the drama onscreen within their everyday lives. A certain amount of attraction to the person playing the love of your life was expected – encouraged even – but too much was the start of some extremely difficult shit.

"I've just gotten here myself actually," she told me. "I was looking for you."

"Me?" I was puzzled. Bella and I didn't have any rehearsal time together today, though no doubt we would be running through our scenes together in our own time. We had already talked about how we were going to best portray these two tragic lovers and we both decided that we would give it everything we had. I had a lot of respect and admiration for Rob and the fact that my future sister-in-law was part of the real story made me want to really give it my all.

"I just wanted to apologise again for leaving so abruptly last night," she said. "As you've probably noticed – or maybe not since you're a man – I had to go and make myself look like a seventeen year-old New York socialite this morning."

I nodded. "Whilst it makes a nice change that you are acknowledging the fact that I am indeed a man, I did notice the change in hairstyle."

She chuckled. "You just couldn't let yourself be perceived as an insensitive macho jerk for one minute could you Edward?" She sighed deeply, over-dramatising something as she prepared what was no-doubt the punch-line of her joke. "You're going to make someone a very attentive wife some day."

I shoved her lightly and we began walking towards some other sound studios that people were coming in and out of. "The hair looks good," I commented after our mutual laughter had died down.

"Thanks," she replied, shrugging. "I'm not too sure about it myself. It's a little light."

I copied her shrug and said nothing else. The truth was, although I preferred Bella's original hairstyle, she didn't look any worse for having Kristen's hair instead. Her hair would change several times throughout the course of the film as she played the ten year span of Kristen's life that the movie conveyed. I didn't exactly see how they were expecting to pass my 18-year old co-star off as 26, but I guess the make-up department would be the ones solving that problem. I had seen pictures of Kristen from newspapers and from Esme and I had to admit that the casting of Bella to fill her role was pretty spot on. They had a very similar face shape and even when she was in her mid-twenties, Kristen had looked as if she could have passed for an older teen if she tried. The only thing that was different however, was the expression in their eyes. One of the most famous pictures of Kristen was her wedding photo, which was released to all the newspapers within New York upon her marriage to Timothy Winters. On the outside they looked like the picture perfect, Upper East Side couple with their expensive designers wedding clothes and not a hair out of place. However, one good look at the bride revealed that the marriage was pretty much doomed to begin with. There was absolutely nothing in Kristen's eyes. There was no happiness shining from the pages of the newspaper, no spark. Instead, there was something in them that I couldn't quite name, but something that I felt as if I recognised and Bella certainly did not have the same look.

They always say a picture can paint a thousand words and that one certainly did, if not several more. The groom had looked at his bride with all the love and pride that he was expected to have, but she couldn't even properly fake the smile that graced her lips. She did not look at him, but instead looked at the camera, as if conveying some sort of message to the rest of the world – or maybe just one person in particular. Obviously the picture had taken on a much greater meaning to me since I found out that Rob and Kristen had been involved with each other, but even before that, I always felt that there was something 'off' in the photograph – my knowledge now just confirmed it.

"So did you and your brother get up to anything wild when I left?" Bell asked. We had passed the sound stage that I had thought we were heading for, but we kept on walking anyway.

I let out a sudden burst of laughter at her question, to which she reacted by giving me a strange look. I didn't exactly count moaning to my brother about the fact that I had just realised I was attracted to my co-star as 'wild' – nor would Bella. "I don't think Carlisle knows what wild means unless it's in reference to animals."

Bella's mouth lifted in a cheeky smirk and there was a glint in her eyes that had me smiling at her in return. "I highly doubt that," she disagreed. "I think your brother can get pretty wild if he really wanted to. At least he did in my head when I was younger."

"Oh good god!" I exclaimed, stopping in my tracks as Bella's laughter sounded loudly around me. I wanted to scrub my brain free from the images that her suggestive words had conjured up. "That was way too much information and something I could have done the rest of my life without ever having to hear."

Bella just continued laughing and walking away from me, but I couldn't get over the knowledge that she had ever pictured Carlisle in a sexual way. She was only 18 for god's sake! When he had modelled that underwear line she would have only been 8 and there was no way an 8-year old girl had sexual fantasies about anyone. 8 year olds didn't even know what sex was! She had to have been teasing me to get a reaction. That was the only explanation that wouldn't make me want to bleach my brain out.

"Please tell me you're kidding," I pleaded with her when I finally regained the use of my legs again after that traumatic revelation. She shrugged in a very annoyingly non-committal kind of way. She was clearly enjoying torturing me in this way. "You have to be kidding," I reasoned, calling her out on her little bluff. "You were only 8 when that advertising campaign was released. There was no way you were that sick then."

She snorted at this and looked at me in a very patronising sort of way that would have annoyed the hell out of me at any other point, but right now I was far too horrified for any other emotion to even get a mention. "And advertising campaigns like those just go away forever huh?"

I groaned, realising that she hadn't been lying at all. Obviously she had seen the pictures later on in her life via some form of media device and it had all started from there. I didn't know how I could carry on being friends with someone admitted to having had sexual fantasies about my brother. Then I remembered I was friends with Rosalie. Not only had Rose freely admitted to me that she'd had sex dreams about Carlisle when she first met him, she admitted it to Carlisle. I don't think I've ever seen my brother stumble and stutter as much as he did during that conversation. Somehow, I doubt Bella would have the nerve to ever do such a thing, which gave me an insanely diabolical plan.

I sighed deeply, which caused her to look around at me. "Not another one," I said in a defeated tone. "I wonder what Carlisle would say this time."

Now it was Bella that stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me with her jaw hanging open and her eyes wide with panic and fear. Turnabout was fair play; she couldn't complain about this after what she'd just revealed to me.

"You wouldn't?" she challenged, but there was a wavering in her voice that implied she wasn't at all sure that I wouldn't spill the beans about her adolescent fantasies to their very object.

I shrugged. "Carlisle and I have a very honest relationship," I tell her, keeping my voice even and my face completely devoid of any signs of laughter. "It's not like you're the first one. Rosalie...well, let's just say there was a very awkward time in their relationship when Carlisle could not look her in the eyes."

I chuckled at the memory of the week after Rosalie had confessed to my older brother about the exact content of the dreams she had about him. We had all been living in the same apartment at that point and every time they were in the same room as each other, Carlisle would glance in Rosalie's direction, go bright red and mumble about having to be somewhere else. At the time, I had found it slightly frustrating because I would be having a conversation with him and Rose would turn up, or be in the room we were walking into and suddenly he would completely forget that I had been talking to him. Now, looking back, I couldn't find anything but humour in the situation. When I looked over at Bella, however, she looked both confused and slightly wary of me, no doubt still wondering whether or not I would actually tell Carlisle what she'd said. I decided to say nothing and let her stew because honestly she deserved it for coming out with a very disturbing comment like that in the first place.

We had walked to the other side of the lot where there was absolutely no one in sight before Bella finally spoke again. "Isn't that a little awkward for you?" she asked, voice full of curiosity.

I looked back at her, confused as to what she meant. "For me? Not really. Why?" I could imagine that it was still awkward for Carlisle in the rare times I mentioned it to get a rise out of him, but mostly we all pretended that week in our lives didn't actually happen. We never spoke of it again and even Rosalie had now glossed over the fact that she had once been attracted to my brother. Whenever I even so much as hint at mentioning it, she shuts me up before the words start to form in my head. She now saw Carlisle as her brother and she didn't relish the thought of incest, even if she did still admit that he was an extremely attractive man.

Bella shrugged and looked around, her eyes nervously sliding from one thing to another in the distance just above my shoulders and to either side of me. "Well, you know," she tried, evidently uncomfortable with what she wanted to say.

I shook my head and she glared at me in frustration, as if it was my fault she was being as clear as mud right now. How the hell did she expect me to know what she was thinking when she wouldn't tell me and I wasn't exactly a mind reader? It wasn't as if I was trying to purposely be a dick just to make her angry, but she seemed to interpret my ignorance as exactly that. "Seriously Bella, I'm a guy. You're going to have to spell this one out for me."

She groaned and rolled her eyes. "You are so fucking infuriating you know that right?"

"And you, with your half-sentences and murky implications aren't?" I retorted.

"I just wanted to know if it was awkward between you and Rosalie knowing that she had the hots for your brother when you are obviously-"

"Edward! Bella!" Ben's voice calling us interrupted Bella in the middle of her tirade – and just before she got to the good part too. When I was obviously what exactly?

I was extremely curious as to how she was going to end that sentence and in all honesty, I was a little pissed at Ben for choosing this very moment to appear when I'd been looking for him for the better part of thirty minutes. He had waited this long to come out of wherever he had been hiding, but he couldn't have waited another couple of seconds just so I could have heard the end of Bella's sentence? Honestly, the guy could never have done a comedy film – he had the worst timing in the history of the world. Bella, on the other hand, looked extremely relieved to have Ben interrupt us. This surprised me because he had interrupted her in the middle of something it seemed that she had wanted to get off her chest for a while seeing as she was very touchy about it. Then again, she had seemed very reluctant to elaborate on what she meant by her less than clear question about the awkwardness between Carlisle, Rosalie and I brought about by Rosalie's uncontrollable hormones and equally uncontrollable mouth.

"Where have you guys been?" he asked, a little breathless because he'd jogged over to us.

"We were looking for you actually," Bella covered and I couldn't help but snort softly at this. Initially, I had been looking for Ben, but we had been looking for no one. In fact, judging from where we were, it would appear that the purpose of our walk had been to avoid bumping into anyone at all.

"All the way out here?" It seemed as if Ben had been having exactly the same thoughts as me. Maybe he had the power to read people's minds. "Everyone's in sound stage 5 over the other side of the lot."

"Oh," Bella said, shrugging and seemingly unconcerned about the fact that Ben didn't believe for a second that we had been looking for him. She began to walk away from the both of us without another word and I was pretty sure that she would never bring up the topic of conversation that we'd been having that morning ever again. She would probably pretend that none of it had happened and therefore, she wouldn't have to give me the answers she was obviously trying to get out of giving me. Hmmm...well, I'd just have to coax it out of her when she least expected it.

Ben and I started walking after her. "What exactly were the two of you doing out here?" Ben asked me, his tone hinting at something I didn't feel at all comfortable with.

"Like she said," I reiterated, voice completely neutral. "We were looking for you. I wanted to know if you were ready to read the scene yet."

Ben didn't look as if he believed me any more than he believed Bella, but he also knew that he wasn't going to get a different answer from either of us, so he just shrugged and nodded. By the time we made it through the doors of sound stage 5, Bella was already involved in a scene with Alice. Ben and I found the area that was being used as the hotel bar where the two men meet and tell each other about their version of the one woman they both loved.

*

The afternoon at the studio hadn't been too bad and I had actually finished recording all the songs that they wanted me to try out. The next step was now filming a couple of the scenes that they would be used in and superimpose either my version of the songs or Rob's original version and see which the executive and the test-audience responded to better. I didn't, for one minute, think that any of my versions stood a chance against the original and I didn't really understand why they would ever want to use anything other than the man's vocals for his songs. There were undoubtedly songs used in the film that Robert had written for Kristen and about Kristen and the only way that those songs could be expressed properly was by the man that wrote them. I know that some actors did very well when they sang the songs of the musicians they were portraying – Reese Witherspoon and Jacquin Phoenix for example – but, I could definitely hear the difference. There was so much emotion behind the words when Rob sang them because they were his emotions, his thoughts and his experiences. I had never experienced the kind of obsessive, all-consuming love that he felt for this woman and so I could never inflect my words in the same manner. But hey, I was the hired monkey right, and I did the dance that the suite organ-grinders wanted me to do.

I walked into the small bedroom in my temporary home and collapsed on the bed, my arms and legs spread in a way that would have been a very good imitation of a starfish. The day, as a whole, hadn't been as bad as I thought it was going to be this morning; then again, my mind had been clouded by the constant pounding earlier. I had thought that my realisation that I was attracted to Bella would change the way I acted around her, but I don't really think it did because I had always been a bit intimidated by her anyway. I had noticed that I was having slightly inappropriate thoughts about her, but I put a stop to those as soon as I recognised them. It wasn't as if I was picturing the girl naked and willing on my bed or anything, but some of the thoughts I had about the way her eyes looked when she was smiling, or the way her lips curved when she was really smiling, were not the kind of thoughts one would have about their co-star. I mean I didn't have any of those thoughts for Alice, Jessica or Angela even though all three of them were very attractive girls indeed. I tried my hardest to keep all inappropriate thoughts to a minimum though and I was fairly certain it would get easier with time.

Alice and Tyler had joined me in the recording studio for the latter half of the afternoon and it was safe to say that Alice Brandon did not like me. Before today, I had just suspected that she didn't like me, but now I was absolutely sure of it. The only thing I wasn't exactly sure of was what the hell I'd done that made her dislike me in such a short space of time. I had met Alice only on three occasions and during the first one, she actually seemed quite friendly towards me – flirty even. Now, she spent a large proportion of her time glaring at me whenever we were in the same room. I thought back to anything I may have said to offend her and could literally come up with nothing.

It was going to be quite an uncomfortable situation if she continued with the almost blatant hostility because not only were we supposed to work together for the next three months, but it seemed as if one of my best friends was planning on her being around for a prolonged period of time. Jasper was quite smitten with Miss Brandon and had told me more about her than I ever cared to know. I knew that her favourite colour was blue and that she loved dancing to no music at all. I knew that her favourite desert was pana cotta and what her shampoo smelled like. In short, Jasper had gushed about her so much that he spoke for an entire thirty minutes non-stop about her without noticing the fact that I hadn't said anything in return within that time frame. The only thing I really wanted to know about the girl was why she seemed extremely distant towards me and that was probably the only thing Jasper didn't have an answer to. Maybe I should ask Bella why Alice seemed to hate me in particular out of everyone in the case. If I'd done something to inadvertently offend her than I wanted to apologise and clear up the misunderstanding. I didn't want to be on bad terms with someone that I may have to spend a lot of time hanging out with even once we'd wrapped the film.

I searched around for my lap top, wondering whether Rosalie had sent me the email that she promised detailing exactly what she had done today. Esme had informed Carlisle and I yesterday that Rose had made an appointment to see her father at his place of work today under a pseudonym. She had tried to get in contact with both of her parents, but neither of them had answered her calls or allowed her to see them when she visited their house in Brighton. She knew very well why they were avoiding her – they didn't want to talk about the trial and its implications. They had basically stopped even acknowledging that Rosalie was still alive and their daughter and the fact that she had been proven right all along would not matter to them. The only thing that did matter was that their name had once again been dragged through the mud simply by having Rosalie's name in print as one of the victims in the case. It astounded me that Rosalie's parents could still be so fucking heartless and callous about the whole thing when surely they now knew that their daughter had been telling the truth the whole time. Was this their way of coping with the knowledge that they had failed her in the most basic sense? By pretending that nothing happened? Surely an apology would have been much more fitting – too little too late, yes, but definitely better than this absolute refusal to admit their own mistakes and accept their part of the blame.

I was still extremely worried about Rosalie, especially in the context of her confronting her parents, but I was less worried about her general well-being. I had finally learnt last night exactly why Esme had come out to support Rosalie in her endeavours this week, not just with her parents, but with the baby that she never even had the chance to know. Carlisle had told me the story of the little girl that Esme had never even gotten the chance to hold in her arms and it made me appreciate exactly how this woman that Rose had known for little over a month could understand her in a way I couldn't even begin to imagine. They had shared the most terrible loss and if Esme could help Rosalie deal with the pain that she'd been ignoring for the past five years then I was only too grateful for her help.

It had been painful for Carlisle to tell me what happened to the woman he loved, but Esme had given him permission to let me know exactly why she was much better qualified, in a sense, to be guiding Rosalie through this part of her journey.

"Esme was in her sophomore year at Brown when she found out she was pregnant," Carlisle started, his eyes dimming from their usual bright blue. "She was dating her high school boyfriend at the time. They'd been together since junior year of high school and everyone expected that they'd get married once they both finished undergrad."

Carlisle stopped and emptied the beer bottle he'd been holding onto for the last ten minutes before he carried on talking. I supposed now wasn't the best time in the world to talk about this, but I guess we never did learn that drinking and serious topics of conversation did not exactly go hand in hand. I felt more than a little guilty for bringing this up when I no longer wanted to talk about Bella, but I had no idea when I asked that it would lead to the morose mood that now enveloped Carlisle.

"She told him about the pregnancy and they got engaged within about two weeks, but not before her boyfriend did some freaking out. At first he told her to think about getting rid of the baby because they just weren't ready for it. Esme, of course, was appalled. She accepted that they weren't ready for a kid yet, but it didn't mean that they couldn't cope and in that circumstance, she thought it was completely wrong to even think about having an abortion. They could provide for the baby and still carry on with their lives without much interruption."

"Her boyfriend eventually came around to the idea, though now Esme suspects it may have had something to do with his family rather than him. She was happy though, when he proposed and seemed to accept the new direction that their lives were going. Of course she was happy, even though it was earlier than planned, she was getting everything she ever wanted."

"Anyway, one weekend, she visited Yale to surprise her fiancé because he'd claimed that the reason he couldn't visit her himself was that he had far too much work to do for school. She walked into his apartment to find him having sex with two other girls. She ran out of there faster than he had even realised she had caught him. I guess it took a while with his attention already divided in two." Carlisle's bark of sarcastic laughter was dripping in malice and his eyes were hard. Obviously the man had issues with the bastard that had caused Esme so much pain.

"It was on the drive back that everything happened," Carlisle continued, his eyes now brimming with pain rather than contempt. "She didn't see it coming and for the longest time she blamed herself thinking that she should have known better than to drive home that upset. It was a drunk driver. She was about twenty miles from where she lived when he hit her side of the car. She was brought into hospital unconscious and bleeding. She's lucky to be alive, but..."

Carlisle stopped speaking, swallowed and looked away. It didn't matter that Esme's unborn child hadn't been his, nor did it matter to him that he hadn't even known her then; he still felt her pain. He knew her now and loved her now and anything that had ever upset her before affected him. I guess that's what happens when you find the one you want to share your life with – you share the past as well as the present and the future. He didn't need to say anything else for me to know exactly why Rose and Esme had something in common even though they couldn't be more different. The accident had killed the baby and ripped away the happy future that Esme had envisioned only months before.

The worst part of the story had actually been how Esme's supposed fiancé took the news that the woman he was supposed to have loved was lying in a hospital room after having lost their unborn child. He had visited her, sure, but when she told him about what she had seen the afternoon of the accident, all he told her was that he felt too much pressure. He had felt pressured into growing up and starting a family with her when all he wanted to do was have fun. They were still young and in college; neither of them needed to be tied down with a child and a husband/ wife. It was clear that he saw the accident as some sort of get out of jail free card and that made me sick. He had clearly never really loved her and chose to reveal that whilst she was still recovering both physically and emotionally from the accident that had been partially his fault. I really failed to understand how some people could look themselves in the mirror in the morning.

I glanced at the numerous emails in my inbox looking for Rosalie's name and finally found it sandwiched between an email from my agent and an email from Zafrina. She and I had spoken once more before I left London and decided to keep in touch. She was fun to be around and there was definitely an underlying attraction between us, which I don't think was one-sided at all. I knew that she was going to be in New York to go to college, but whether or not we'd be in the city at the same time was yet to be seen.

Ed,

Went to see my shitty excuse for a father yesterday and it was as much of a fucking nightmare as I thought it would be. I posed as a prospective employee just so that he'd actually see me and when he walked into the room and saw me the man almost had a fucking coronary. His face went from white to red to purple and he told me to get out. His actual words were:

'I see you haven't given up lying to get your own way Rosalie, but I don't have time right now to indulge you.'

Charming right? I don't know how I held myself together, but I resisted the urge to punch the fucker in the face. Anyway, I politely told him that we were having this conversation whether he wanted to or not and it was his choice if we had it in the corridors of his office or in the private meeting room. That made him re-think his stance of me leaving the room.

Anyway, I told him everything. I think I just really wanted him to know. I wanted him to have the same thoughts and images as I'd had in my head since I was 13. I wanted him to feel even a fraction of what I did for all these years. I think I wanted him to understand exactly what his apathy and his turning a blind eye to everything had done to me. My therapist says that I needed my parents to acknowledge what had happened, but to be perfectly honest, I don't think they ever will and my Dad certainly didn't disappoint on that front. He sat there completely devoid to emotion and when I was done all he said was that he didn't need to hear that crude language and I should stop holding on to the imaginings of a 13-year old. He told me I wasn't a little girl anymore and I should realise that my lies and my actions hurt other people – him and my mother for example.

Somehow Edward, the bastard managed to turn it around so that it was once again my fault. It was my fault that my mother was apparently being medicated to her eyeballs right now. Apparently, I broke their hearts with what I did when I was seventeen. What fucking hearts?! My mother's heart was black and shrivelled long before I even came into the world. That was why she could stand to be around my father in the first place.

I walked out before he could somehow imply that it was my fault his friend had decided to rape me when I was a child because I really don't think I could have held back from doing something I probably wouldn't regret, but would definitely be arrested for. I think I felt worse after seeing my father than I did after I went to see Royce King. I don't know what the hell I expected from him, but was an apology too much to hope for? Was recognition of the fact that he had been nearly as responsible for what had happened to me too much? I guess with my parents any kind of human emotion is too much to ask for.

I don't know Ed. I thought I'd prepared myself for what was bound to come out of the man's mouth when he saw me, but I guess you can't really steel yourself up for something like that. I want to know why the hell I got lumbered with parents that had no business having a child in the first place. Was I some social experiment for them that went horribly wrong? Did they ever care about me at all? When I was little, I used to think my life was wonderful. I had everything every little girl dreams of – all the toys and clothes I could want, a pony and I never had to share my parents with anyone. Now, looking back all I see is emptiness and isolation. Sure, I had all the material things I could ever dream of, but I didn't have anyone to enjoy them with even then. My parents were always away and we never really spent any time together.

Hmmm...I guess there's nothing I can do about it now. I said what I had to say to him – purged myself from the words I'd longed for him to hear from me. I think I probably have closed that wound as much as I can and maybe years down the line it'll heal and maybe not. Can you ever get over the knowledge that your parents never loved you at all?

Anyway, I hope you haven't jumped off the edge of a cliff by now, though I wouldn't blame you if you had. My life is a tad depressing no? Ha...there's the understatement of the century. I hope everything is going well for you in New York. Don't worry about me because I know that's what you tend to do. I'm not exactly fine, but I'm getting there and I will be fine. Just concentrate on yourself and doing the best job you can because you deserve success Edward. After everything you've done for me and your Mom, you deserve some time to just be you.

Xxx

I shook my head at the end of Rosalie's email. I could tell that she was trying to make a joke out of her current situation in order to convince me that she really was okay and I didn't need to do something crazy like jump on the next plane to London. She made it sound like I had done something special for her, but I don't think I had. I was there for her because she was my best friend – anyone else would have done the same thing. I think sometimes Rosalie saw me as some shining example of the male species because I had been the first man in her life that hadn't let her down, but I hadn't done anything except be her friend. I wished I could have done something more for her, but I was only human and my capacity to help her was limited.

I sighed and closed the computer, deciding to catch up on the rest of my emails later. I needed to take a walk in order to clear my mind of Rosalie's current situation and problems. I hated that her parents were such poor excuses for human beings. I hated that she felt as if they had never loved her because seriously, who ever needs to feel that? My own childhood may not have been filled with flowers and rainbows, but at least I knew that my mother loved me unconditionally. The world really was a fucked up place to be; it was a wonder how anyone could trust anyone else.

*

BPOV

I looked at myself critically in the mirror, bothered about the fact I was bothered about the new hair. I had never been the type of person so care much about what I looked like and now I was semi-freaking out about my new hair cut when it was all for a part anyway. I had wanted to be someone else all weekend and now that I was finally taking steps along the road of transformation, I was having second thoughts about the whole thing. It was just extremely strange to see my face framed by hair that made me look like a completely different person. It was like I was my own cousin – I could see the similarities to my old self, but it didn't quite fit. I had no idea that Alice was intending on taking me to the hairdressers at six o'clock this morning, but that was exactly what had happened. She, herself had need to dye her hair a few shades lighter and get extensions put in. She had embraced the change completely, already loving the idea of being able to flick her longer hair around when she was playing a rock chick on the screen.

I was still grappling with the acceptance of my new look and it didn't sit well with me that I was so hung up about my own hair. It wasn't even like the change was that drastic; I didn't have to shave my hair or anything. It was only about four inches shorter, if that. I guess the biggest change was the colour. My hair was a dark, mahogany with hints of a dark red when the sun shone on it, but now it was much closer to blond than I had ever envisioned myself being. I had never thought that I was one of those girls that identified who they were by the way that they looked, but apparently I was more superficial than I had thought. I felt like I was losing myself even though I had been craving to lose myself in this character. Goodness, I really needed to stop with the over-dramatics – it was only hair for crying out loud. Besides, Edward had said that the new hair looked good so it couldn't have been that bad right? God, I was pathetic. I was not only obsessing about my hair, but obsessing about obsessing about my hair. I really needed to get the hell out of this apartment. In fact, what I really needed was to get the hell out of my head, but that wasn't going to be happening any time soon so leaving the apartment would have to do.

I decided that this would be a very good time to take a walk and absorb the atmosphere of the streets of Manhattan. I had heard several times that this was a city where you could walk down the street and just disappear within the crowd and I had a feeling that's exactly what I needed right now. Hell, who was I kidding? I had no idea what the hell I needed right now. I simultaneously wanted to be someone else and just disappear, but not lose who I was. I was confused and emotional and not really in the right frame of mind to be walking around a strange city by myself, but I also really needed to clear my head. I was sick of the company of my thoughts and it didn't help that I was feeling more than a little guilty about the whole Jacob situation.

I had logged on to my email account this afternoon and found an email from him begging me to just pick up the phone and call him. He needed to hear from me that I was fine, not from his computer or from his friend. I felt awful, but not awful enough to pick up the phone. For some unfathomable reason, I just couldn't face talking to Jake. Was it because I would have a complete breakdown if I heard his voice? Maybe. I could pretend to everyone else that I was fine and that I was handling whatever situation was going on with me very well, but I couldn't do that with Jake and I didn't want to go over the situation yet; I wasn't ready. So I right now I was choosing avoidance as the way to deal with everything and when that came crashing down...well, I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

I wrote back telling him that I needed some time to clear my head before I rehashed everything with him. I needed some space and whilst I appreciated his concern, it really wasn't warranted. I was doing the best I could be and coping in the only way I knew how to – by immersing myself in my work and the new world I was going to be a part of. I had enjoyed rehearsals today, not just when I was doing the scenes I was involved in, but also when I was watching everyone else. It was great to see it coming together and I just knew that in less than three weeks when we were ready to actually film, everyone would be great. I was excited about the film, more so than I had been for any other project I was part of and I didn't think it was just because it would really be my first leading role. I was excited because it wasn't everyday that you got to work with a cast and crew as brilliant and cohesive as the one we had right now. I was sounding like someone's awards acceptance speech, but that was honestly how I felt as I watched everyone rehearse their scenes.

I walked past a small coffee shop about four blocks from where my apartment was and decided that a good cup of coffee was always a good idea. It didn't look too busy in the shop, but it was filled with enough people so that I could enjoy just watching everyone else going about their lives. I did enjoy people watching. There was nothing better at getting your mind off whatever happened to be bothering you than watching the people around you, even if you didn't know anything about them. I guess it reminded me of the fact that I wasn't the only person in the world with problems or worries. Everyone had the tendency to get caught up in their own world, but being around people made you realise that the world did not centre around you and your issues. I guess it was humbling in a way.

I got my coffee and chose a seat at the very back of the small shop so that I could absorb the atmosphere without being part of it myself. I had been sitting there for about ten minutes, watching the couple in the far right corner interact and pretend like they weren't attracted to each other. They were young, probably a couple of years younger than I was and at intermittent times, they would catch the other one looking at them and they would both turn quickly. It was kind of cute the way they were obviously into each other, but didn't want the other to know. Oh...young love. I caught myself then and had to chuckle. Sometimes I wondered how old I thought I was because I certainly didn't feel like I was only 18. My mother had once told me that I had been born middle-aged and just got older every year. The thought of my Mom then sent a twisting pain to shoot through my chest and I had to close that particular avenue of reflection as soon as it started or I would turn into a blubbering wreck in the middle of a coffee shop.

I turned my head slightly from the young non-couple that I had been watching just in time to see someone extremely familiar walk through the coffee shop doors. I wanted to get up and walk straight out again, but he had spotted me before I could make my escape and he was already making his way towards me, that sickening smile stretching his lips. I gulped down the remaining coffee in my cup, not caring too much that it was burning the back of my throat – anything to get out of this place faster.

"My my, Isabella," James Wilde greeted, his expression almost leering. "Fancy seeing you here all by your lonesome."

James' tone turned my stomach even though he had said very little to me. There was something about the guy that I just didn't like and I doubted that I would have felt any different had he not tried to eat my face the last time I saw him. I smiled tightly at him, not wanting him to see that he was pissing me off just by being here; it would only have encouraged him. I had a feeling that James was the kind of guy who liked the chase; the more unavailable the target of this attentions, the more exciting he found them.

"Fancy seeing you here at all James," I said whilst standing. I needed to leave if he was going to be here. "LA get a bit too small for you?"

He laughed and an unpleasant shiver ran down my spine. "Babe, America is too small for me, though if you're up for the challenge..." He winked at me suggestively and I wanted to scratch my eyeballs out just so I didn't have to see it.

I shook my head and resisted the urge to vomit all over the table in front of us. "Well, it's been nice talking to you James," I say with a sickly sweet smile that lets him know exactly what I thought of talking to him. "We should do this again the other side of never."

I started walking away and hoped to god that he didn't actually follow me. I didn't know or care why exactly James Wilde was in New York, but I did know that I didn't want to run into him again. He was everything that was wrong with Hollywood – young and old. He believed that a little bit of talent entitled him to behave like the world's biggest tool; he reminded me a lot of Kyle. Again pain ripped through me faster than I could stop the thoughts that caused them. I wished I could control thoughts that filtered their way down into my consciousness. It seemed as if there really was no escape from the thoughts about my mother and the situation I had created between the two of us. Maybe I had already come to the bridge and I was just resisting walking across it with all my might.

*

I was on the verge of my fifteenth birthday when I met Kyle Ludlow. He had been cast as my older brother in a biopic about a very well known politician. He was 17 and incredibly good looking and charismatic. He had everyone on set eating out of the palm of his hands, actors and crew members alike. I was awed by him, impressed by the way he handled everything that was thrown at him. He was third generation Hollywood. His grandmother was the first women to have been made head of a major movie studio and his grandfather was the first African-American male to even be nominated for an Oscar. His father was one of the most respected directors in Hollywood and his mother had just won her second Oscar for a film that she had written. He was born and bred for the business and there wasn't anyone working on the film that doubted it for a moment.

I think I idolised him as soon as I saw him, with his bright blue eyes, thick wavy blond hair and dimples that appeared when he gave his toothpaste commercial smile. I wanted to have the kind of standing he had in the world that we both inhabited. I sought his approval as soon as we met and I followed him around the set like I was eight and he was an ice cream van. I didn't understand until it was too late that Kyle was an over-privileged asshole who was far too used to getting his own way to really appreciate the value to anything. At the time, all I wanted to was for him to like me and accept me as a friend and maybe teach me something about the movie world that he had garnered from years of experience.

I had always been proud of myself for not buckling under the pressure of Hollywood but to be perfectly honest, I wasn't always that way. At 14 all I wanted to do was fit in somewhere. It's hard being a teenager and not really having a place where I belonged. I was a child in an adult world, but I wasn't like all the other children my age and we had nothing in common. I wanted Kyle to like me enough so that I could fit in with him and his friends. He seemed as if he had this whole thing figured out and he was only three years older than I was. I was absolutely devastated when I overheard him talking to a friend of his whilst they were smoking by his trailer. His friend made a derogatory comment about the way I followed Kyle around the set. I had expected my onscreen brother to defend me, but he just laughed and agreed with the friend. I went back to my own trailer and cried for hours. Clearly I was too young and too immature for him to be friends with me. I was being an annoying kid and I didn't want him to see me that way; I would have to change that.

I remembered the conversation that Renee was talking about as soon as she said it, though I had tried my hardest to block it out of my memory.

Kyle and I were in the make-up trailer waiting for the make-up artists to come and prepare us for the day ahead. I had stopped following him around so much and stopped giggling like a twelve year old school girl whenever I was around him. I wanted him to see me as an equal, not as some annoying thorn in his side.

"How're you doing kid?" Kyle asked me after we had been sitting in silence for a little while.

I frowned at his nickname for me. I had been thrilled when he first used it, thinking he was getting used to me and had accepted me, but now I just saw it as a patronising term. "Kid?" I asked, my voice taking on a hard quality that I had used many times in films, but never really needed to in my real life. "What are you, about a year older than me?"

Kyle looked a little taken aback by me response – normally I would have just blushed and said that I was okay before asking him how he was. He smiled down at me. "Try about three."

"Well I'm good, thanks...kid." I emphasised the last word with a smirk and a challenge to my tone.

Kyle looked at me curiously, his eyebrow cocking upwards in question. "Did I do something to offend you Isabella?"

I shook my head. "You didn't do anything Kyle," I lied. "I just don't like being treated like a four year old by someone who's not even legal themselves." I didn't know where I was getting all of this bravado from, but suddenly, I was feeling extremely confident in front of Kyle Ludlow. That was until he laughed at me.

"It's not about the age kid," he explained to me, his voice accenting the last word as mine had done before. "It's about the life experience."

"What makes you think I don't have life experience?" I snapped, not really thinking about what the hell to say to back that up because I didn't have any life experience. I may have been in Hollywood, but I certainly didn't live that kind of life. I was a fairly well-adjusted 14-year old girl still living with her parents.

Kyle laughed at me and I felt my face burn with both anger and embarrassment. "Seriously?" he asked me, still chuckling. "Kid, you're on a film set with your Mom. I don't think I've had my parents on set with me since I was about 10 and even then that was because I was working on one of their movies."

I spoke without thinking. It was a reflex at the fact that this guy, who I wanted so much to be like, was making fun of me. "It's not exactly my choice that she's here," I lied. "She just follows me around from movie set to movie set because she has nothing better to do. It's like nesting syndrome or whatever." Even as I was saying them the words left a funny taste in my mouth. I wanted to take them back, but I didn't want to lose face with Kyle.

Kyle sat back and appraised me whilst I tried to keep my face completely expressionless, almost bored even. "So why don't you just tell her to go?" he questioned.

"Because she'd totally go off the deep end," I kept going with my lies. "I once told her that I didn't want her to pick me up from some audition and she had to go and see a shrink."

Kyle laughed and suddenly, I felt a little better about the lies I was telling him. I was just proving to him that I could fit in with the group of people he hung around with and Renee would never know about the lies that had come out of my mouth. The truth was that I was extremely grateful that my Mom came to movie sets with me. She took my mind off work when I had to some particularly hard scenes or when I'd had a really horrible day. She was my best friend and I couldn't imagine doing this without her.

"You know, you may be alright kid," he said, winking at me and this time, I felt as if the nickname wasn't meant to patronise anymore. He held out his pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I had heard all about peer pressure from both Renee and Charlie, but right now even with their words ringing in my ears, I couldn't help but stretch out my hand to accept the welcoming gesture that Kyle was extending to me.

I didn't know then that my life would change with that conversation and not just in the sense that I would become a nicotine addict and shorten my life expectancy. I couldn't even begin to conceive how those words would forever alter my relationship with my mother – if I had, maybe I wouldn't have tried so hard to be accepted by someone I later found out was an absolute asshole anyway. The appeal of Kyle Ludlow had severely diminished when I found out that he had slept with more than half the extras on set and had tossed them away when he was done with them. I finally saw him for the dick that he was and it definitely helped shatter my illusions of what being accepted in Hollywood entailed. I realised that I was happier being myself than trying to fit in with what Kyle and his friends deemed to be appropriate behaviour. Too bad I didn't realise that before I irrevocably ruined my relationship with my mother.

I turned onto the street that held our apartment blocks, wondering what I was supposed to do about the whole situation with Renee. I had apologised to her, but I think it was a case of too little far too late. I only wished that I could have realised where the distance came from years before so that I could have done something to fix it. I knew I couldn't talk to either Sam or my father about it because it was quite clear that Renee had never told them the entire truth of our situation. I was more than a little glad that she hadn't; I didn't need both my father and my older brother hating me when my Mom already did. It was a moment of complete idiocy and I wished more than anything I could go back, talk to my 15-year old self and give her a swift kick up the ass.

I walked up the stairs to my empty apartment and was extremely surprised to find a very familiar figure outside of my door, looking like he had been knocking on it.

"Edward?" I asked, wondering what he wanted at 10 o'clock at night.

He spun around and grinned at me, pizza box in one hand a six-pack of beers in another. "Hey Bella," he greeted. "I was thinking that we should probably run some lines tonight."

I eyed the items in his hands suspiciously. "With beer and pizza?"

"We need nourishment," he explained. "So, you up for it?"

I laughed at him and rolled my eyes, trying to hide the fact that I was more than up for it. After the memories I had just run through in my head, I needed someone to take my mind off it. I opened the door to my apartment as he started telling me about his afternoon at the studio, making me laugh as he told one self-deprecating tale after another. He was successfully distracting me from my miserable thoughts and I don't think he even knew what it was he was doing. It seemed as if Edward Cullen could read my mind and anticipate exactly what I needed. This friendship was turning out extremely well; if only everything else in my life was going as well as this.

*

My alarm was blaring louder and louder as it called me from a deep slumber. I tried to move to shut the thing off, but every muscle in my body groaned in protest at the attempted movements. I opened my eyes gingerly, wondering what the hell had happened to me that made me hurt so much that all I wanted to do was lie completely still and practice the art of willing something to happen. I rolled over preparing to just knock the damn alarm off the night stand, but instead found myself being introduced to the floor.

"Ouch!" the floor complained and I was so surprised to find my bed had shrunk in the middle of the night that it took me a while to realise that floors didn't speak – and nor did they move.

"What the hell?" I asked, struggling to get up and finding myself pushing against Edward Cullen's chest.

"That's exactly what I was just thinking," Edward mumbled, grabbing my hands to stop me from pushing and clawing at him. "If this is how you act with all your friends Bella, you're going to get a reputation."

I took my hand back and hit him hard before jumping up and getting off of him. "What the hell are you doing here Edward?"

"Getting beaten up by a hundred pound girl in my sleep apparently," he said, sitting up. "What's up with you?"

I shook my head and started walking to the kitchen. "What happened last night?"

Edward followed me and just shrugged. "The last thing I remember was you trying to kiss me," he told me.

I rolled my eyes. "That was rehearsal Edward. That or you were dreaming."

"Oh Bella," he chuckled. "If it were a dream, you would be doing much more than trying to kiss me."

I almost dropped the cup I was holding, which caused Edward to laugh heartily. I scowled at him and carried on making coffee for the both of us, wondering what we had been doing prior to falling asleep in my lounge. I remembered a lot of laughing and not too much rehearsing. Funnily enough, we hadn't drunk that much beer either, which was precisely why I didn't understand why neither of us could exactly remember what had happened last night. It wasn't really too important, nothing had happened between Edward and I; it wasn't like I was worried whether or not I had cheated on my boyfriend with my co-star. Sure Edward was attractive – extremely so in fact; he had the sort of face that only got better every single time you looked at him. Still, he wasn't my type. My type was my boyfriend and he was definitely not Edward Cullen. Even if I with Jake, I really don't think Edward and I would have worked very well together. We were too similar in some ways and too different in others to really work in a relationship.

Thinking about Jacob made me feel a little guilty, though not in relation to Edward falling asleep in my apartment. I was feeling guilty about the way I had been avoiding him recently and the way I'd kind of brushed off his concerns yesterday. I promised myself that I would email him the first chance I got today to explain exactly what had happened. In fact, I would call him – as soon as I found my abandoned cell phone. I was now ready to face the memories of Friday, ready to tell Jake about everything and ready to have him help me through the mess that I'd made. I really had been the worst girlfriend in the world lately and I sometimes wondered why the hell Jake was still with me. He was a great guy; good looking, funny, sensitive and patient. He could have been with someone who wasn't so screwed up, but yet he had chosen to be with me and chose to remain with me every day, even if I was effectively ignoring all his calls and most of his attempts to contact me. Jesus, if it were the other way around, I'm pretty sure I would have dumped my ass long ago.

I placed a cup of coffee in front of Edward and marvelled at the fact that even though he had obviously slept on the floor, he looked extremely relaxed and well rested. I, on the other hand, could still feel the effects of spending six hours sleeping on a rather uncomfortable couch. He grinned at me in thanks and took a small sip of the steaming hot liquid even though he knew that it would still be too hot to drink seeing as he didn't take milk with his coffee.

"Well, last night wasn't very productive," he began.

I nodded my head in agreement. "We have to make sure that tonight will be far more work-orientated then."

Edward raised his eyebrow in a questioning manner. "One night with me and you're already planning more?" he asked, smirking all the while. "I'm not sure your boyfriend will approve of this Bella."

I opened my mouth to tell him to shut the hell up when a voice spoke out from behind Edward that stopped my heart from beating.

"No, I'm not sure your boyfriend would approve of this either Bella," Jake agreed with Edward.

Holy shit!


AN: Thank you very much to everyone who reads this and for everyone who reviews. I've answered every single one of your reviews individually, but thank you again because I really do enjoy reading what you think about what's happening and where you think it'll go. I hope I haven't disappointed anyone too much with the revelations in this chapter; I feel like I built up stuff with all the cliffhangers and I don't want anyone to feel short-changed. So, if you do, I'm really sorry.