AN: I would offer more apologies, but I don't know if they would just fall on deaf ears. In any case, I AM sorry for the delay. I would go into the details of why and how it took so long to write this, but suffice it to say, the issue lay more with the subject matter than with my time constraints. Basically, I am all angst-ed out. I've met the love of my life, and in the middle of being perfectly, incandescently happy, it's a little difficult to really connect with Punkrockward and Brit Bitch. The good news? I finally managed to get this out, and Dixie held my hand until it was readable-which took awhile. The even better news? This story is about five chapters away from complete and each chapter gets more positive and happier, becuase by the end of this, our favorite couple is finally on their way to healing.
Lyrics are from "I'm in Here" by Sia.
Chapter 34: I'm in Here
I'm in here.
Can anybody see me?
Can anybody hear me?
Can you hear my call?
Are you coming to get me now?
I've been waiting for you to come rescue me.
I need you to hold all of the sadness I cannot
live with inside of me.
Bella
Can you ever return to a life you've left behind?
A life you've outgrown?
I wandered the empty rooms of the loft apartment that I'd shared with Alice for years−every inch of the space so familiar that I could have walked through blindfolded—and it wasn't that far from the truth for the days after I returned to Boston.
I was blind. Deaf. Dumb. Insensible to anything but the gaping hole in my chest, sure that I would stay in this limbo forever, like a ghost, drifting through life but never really living again. The third morning after returning to Boston, I laid in bed, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling, and tried to think, to feel something, but I was still too shell-shocked to assimilate this shocking return to normalcy. I knew I should pick up the threads of the life that I'd left behind when I'd blackmailed Emmett into taking me with Edward, but what had felt so real before now only felt like a fading dream.
I'd told Alice on the phone that I'd needed to come home to work on the blog, to concentrate more on my career. It had gone unsaid between us that I needed to concentrate on anything but Edward. Despite what I'd bravely proclaimed, I'd yet to write a single word. The laptop from Edward lay silent and untouched, the low hum a constant reminder of what I'd lost—and that wasn't just him. I'd been happy, if not spectacularly so, in my old life, but I knew that I'd never be able to go back to that life and find any sort of satisfaction. I'd lost not just Edward, but direction, meaning and purpose.
The third morning dawning over the horizon, I realized what that meant. I couldn't go back. I couldn't stay here in limbo forever. There was only one thing left for me to do.
I was going to have to move forward. No sooner had that thought detonated in my sleep-starved brain than my cell phone rang. The number wasn't familiar, so, since it wasn't Alice or Renee trying to be sympathetic and well-meaning, I answered it.
"Hello," I croaked, my voice rougher than sandpaper after 72 consecutive hours of silence.
"Bella Swan?" the man's voice asked, but didn't wait for confirmation of my identity. "We met briefly last weekend at Esme Platt's house. This is Seth Clearwater, online . . ."
"Online content editor for Rolling Stone," I finished wryly, surprising even myself with the ability to have a sense of humor about how he'd impacted my life. "I remember you."
"I thought you might," he replied with only the barest trace of irony. "You're a hard woman to track down."
"Excuse me?" I asked stupidly, all too aware I wasn't exactly keeping up my end of the conversation.
"Many phone calls to Edward later—unanswered phone calls; straight to voicemail, in fact—I finally had to call the Ice Queen herself. And getting that number wasn't exactly easy, but I have some pull with an editor at Vanity Fair." He paused. "That's really neither here nor there. I called because I knew when Edward mentioned your name that I'd heard of you before, and two days ago I remembered. You're the girl that wrote that review of Aiming to Misbehave."
I closed my eyes and briefly considered hanging up and never answering when he called back, but then I remembered the man had already dug up Esme Platt's cell phone number. Not only would he call back, but going straight to voicemail wouldn't stop him. "Yes. That was me," I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat making it tough to speak, "though I'm not sure why it matters."
"Esme also sent me a few blogs you'd left behind—rough drafts, as I understand them." I cursed the day I'd printed them out. I'd wanted Edward to read them, but then things had gone sour between us, and he'd never had the chance. "I want to hire you," Seth continued, "to write."
"You do?" I couldn't help the dumbfounded tone in my voice. I'd realized the entries were good, of course, but the idea of writing for Rolling Stone was so far-fetched, I hadn't even known to reach that high.
"Yes. And not just for the website, though that'll definitely be a component. The print editor I talked to loves your point of view, and wants to see more, so I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up in the magazine." His voice was excited, and he paused, hanging, waiting for the inevitable, "oh my god, I'm going to be writing for Rolling Stone," reaction he was expecting.
He wasn't the only one. I was waiting for it too, waiting for my own excitement to kick in, but I was still too foggy from not enough sleep and too much emotional carpet-bombing. It was just like Edward, I thought bitterly, to suck the happiness out of life, even during something spectacular like this. If we ever spoke again, I'd have to tell him that he owed me one spectacular, joy-filled reaction—complete with jazz hands and pom-poms.
"That's great," I finally said, my attitude conveying the exact opposite. "I'm very flattered."
"Do you need to think about it?" Seth asked, suddenly sterner, like I was actually contemplating turning down Rolling Stone and he needed to remind me what kind of opportunity this was.
"No, of course not." There was no reason to think about it. The offer was everything I'd wanted since I'd started the blog, years ago. I just wished that I could feel better about the way Seth had discovered my writing. "You do know. . ." the words tumbled out, before I could stop them, "I've cut ties with Edward. I won't be writing about him."
"I thought as much," Seth sighed, "but no, writing about Athair isn't a pre-requisite. This wasn't us trying to use you to get to him. You should know how talented you are."
"I just wanted to make sure," I added a bit more firmly, finally feeling like I was finding my footing in this conversation. "Because if the offer was contingent on Edward Cullen, I'd have to turn it down. Reluctantly, of course."
"Of course," Seth said. "Reluctantly."
I laughed, the gravely sound taking both of us by surprise. "So you do have a sense of humor," Seth added, much more warmly.
"You just caught me by surprise," I confessed. "It's been a rather odd few days."
"I thought you might say that," Seth said, and the almost conspiratorial tone he used confused me.
"I think you're mistaken," I said carefully, "I haven't seen Edward in days. I've been in Boston since Saturday."
"Then you don't know?" he asked, and my heartbeat slowed to a sluggish, nauseating crawl. Something had happened to Edward and nobody had bothered to tell me. It couldn't be good by the almost gleeful attitude Seth had about being the one to inform me. "There's a huge standoff between Edward and the label over the next album. Carlisle's been negotiating. As for the man himself, he's strangely silent suddenly. Nobody's sure where he is in all this."
It's not your business anymore, I told myself, repeating the words until they bled together. Nothing you need to worry about.
"Oh," I said lamely, afraid to say anything else, afraid to let my feelings, the sudden debilitating fear that another horrific event had befallen Edward, show—but my silence was an answer of a different kind.
"Playing your cards close to your chest, I see," Seth teased gently, and I bristled.
"I told you," I retorted, "Edward's off limits. Today, tomorrow, and any time in the near future."
"Alright, then," Seth said breezily, after a pregnant pause. "I'll email you the details of your meeting in New York next week. We'll arrange for transportation. You'll be up here for a day or two, meeting some of the editors, getting a feel for how we do things here."
The rest of the call passed in a haze of details and the overwhelming sense that I was both drowning and gasping for air at the surface.
After Seth hung up, I sat up, edging my way out of bed until my feet hit the cold wood of the floor. The shock jolted me almost more than Seth's news had, but the combination propelled me up and forward. There wouldn't be any more sitting around, waiting for the shards of my past life to suddenly reanimate and coalesce into something I recognized. I was going to have to build it all again, from scratch, and the job offer from Rolling Stone was the first cornerstone.
I took my first shower in three days, the hot water streaming over me for what could have been hours. When I exited the foggy bathroom I felt reborn, as if I'd scrubbed away all the old skin, leaving only the new behind.
The phone rang again, its tone shrill and jarring in the quiet silence of the loft. Wrapped in only a towel, I scampered over to the bed. Not recognizing the phone number and assuming it was Seth, calling back with more details—or worse, to change his mind—I clicked the accept button and held it up to my ear.
"This is Bella," I said breathlessly. In the last half an hour, I'd somehow re-discovered some of my curiosity and thirst for life. The loss of Edward and what he could have been was still a dull ache, but even that pain couldn't dull the hope spreading through me.
"Bella, it's Esme." Her voice was cold and dark—the ice cold reserve I knew she only used when she was desperate to hold back any and all emotion—and it sent me sprawling back to earth.
Seth's gut instincts had been right then; something was wrong with Edward. Esme wouldn't have placed this call unless she had no other choice.
"I shouldn't be calling," Esme continued in an uncharacteristic rush. "I promised myself I wouldn't put you in this position, but . . ."
There was always a "but." Everyone had their price, and Esme Platt's had always been her son.
"What has he done?" I asked flatly. I didn't understand what the purpose was in calling me; it wasn't as if I had any sort of mystic power over Edward and his behavior. If I had . . .
Stop it, I ordered myself as harshly as I could, stop it right now. There are some what-if's that should never be touched, desperate circumstances or not.
"He became very upset," Esme said softly. "An argument with the record label, compounded I suppose by a lack of sleep. He just . . .broke, Carlisle said, and then he locked himself in the closet and has been drinking steadily for two days. He won't leave and he won't let anyone in."
I said nothing. For one ridiculously self-centered moment, I wanted to think that this breakdown was because I'd left, but then I focused on the more important bits of information that Esme had given me. He was in a closet, he hadn't left in two days, and he'd been drinking—and then, of course, all I could think of was the possibility of a world without Edward Cullen.
"How do you know he's still alive?" I blurted out.
"An hour ago, I heard a crash and him muttering some lyrics."
"And you're sure he's been drinking?"
"His voice . . ." Esme trailed off, and if I didn't know any better, I'd think she was trying not to cry.
"He's definitely been drinking. Carlisle said that he kept alcohol in easy to access places. I'm sure he had some stashed away in the closet. I think that may be why he chose that place to hide."
I wondered, not a little bitterly, if his show of reigning in the excess that had so previously defined his life had just been one big, fake act. If, after having sex until I passed out from exhaustion, he'd gone into his closet and drank half a bottle of whiskey to sufficiently numb himself to me and to everything around him.
There wasn't much I'd put past Edward anymore, and it hurt to contemplate that I might not even have those few untouched, unspoiled memories.
"Bella, you need to come tell him to open the door."
The pitch had been in progress from the moment I'd answered the phone, but the sudden delivery of it and its simplicity surprised me. I'd expected Esme to come from a much more subtle angle, but then I supposed she didn't exactly have the luxury of time.
"It wouldn't make a difference if I asked," I admitted. "He doesn't care about me."
"You're wrong," Esme countered, the sudden fierceness in her voice making me wonder if she'd always believed this much in her son's feelings for me. If she had, she'd certainly never mentioned it to me. "Carlisle played me some of the music he wrote over the last couple of days. He cares. He'll open the door for you."
"I'll make it even easier on you," I said calmly. "Just break the door down. Simple, neat, and you don't even need me for that."
"It's a very thick door—mahogany, actually, and the lock is very secure. We're not sure we can break it down without harming him."
The silence stretched between us, the last words Esme had spoken echoing through it. It seemed as if harming himself was the one thing Edward wanted most.
"Please," Esme finally broke down. "Please come talk to him, at the very least."
My knees trembled and I felt them give way. I landed on the side of the bed with a soft plop, the flap of the towel opening from my knee to my thigh. Tracing the skin of my kneecap, I leaned back and tried to find the hopeful place I'd discovered just before this phone call. "Please don't ask me to do this," I said quietly.
"It's too late for that now, Bella," Esme said firmly, but with an unbearable sadness to her voice. "I'm sorry."
"I'll take the train, then."
"No need," Esme countered. "I've already sent Emmett down with a car. He'll be there in an hour."
I felt vaguely offended. She'd already known I'd give in. "You knew I'd say yes," I said accusingly, but I didn't have the energy to give it much heat.
"I'm sorry," Esme repeated. "He's my son, and you love him. Those seemed like good enough reasons."
I could have argued but in the end, Esme was right. I clicked the phone off and, with a sinking stomach, turned to get dressed in anticipation for Emmett's arrival.
It was worse than even I was able to imagine.
The door to Edward's closet, which I'd never noticed while staying at Esme's house, was as solid as a brick wall. I laid my cheek against the smooth, hard wood and tried to discern the sound of Edward's breathing, but all I could hear was silence.
Turning back to the assembled group behind me, I let out a shaky breath. "When was the last time anyone heard anything?" I asked, and my voice trembled a little. Fear that he had passed out, that he was unconscious in a puddle of his own vomit, that he might have blood alcohol poisoning—the worst of the possibilities had been racing through my head since Esme's phone call, and until someone could give me a definite answer, I couldn't breathe easily. It might have been a touch overdramatic, but I loved him, and love, I'd discovered in the last seventy hours, was enough to make or break an entire life.
"Twenty minutes ago, we heard a thump," Rosalie spoke up. "I'm sure that was him. Him or a bottle."
My stomach churned and I glanced back at the heavy door. "I'm going to try to talk to him."
Six pairs of expectant eyes gazed back at me, and I felt the unbearable, terrible weight of their collective hope. "Alone," I added. "I want to be able to tell him the truth, that I'm alone. It's the only way he'll open the door." I didn't know for sure, of course, but I kept up the false bravado of certainty. I knew I couldn't try to convince him with them staring at me, and if I knew Edward as well as everyone thought I did, I was right anyway. With all of them there, I had zero chance of even getting him to listen.
Esme looked like she wanted to argue, but I saw Carlisle squeeze her hand, and she said nothing, only nodded.
"We'll be downstairs," Jasper said, as the group filed out of the bedroom. "Let us know if you need anything, Bella."
Room empty, I turned back to the door. Cautiously I approached it, and laid my head against the word again. "Edward," I said as loudly as I could without actually screaming, "you need to let me in. It's Bella." I wanted to believe that he'd know my voice, know it was me on the other side of the door, but there was no telling how much he'd had to drink. I might be a Martian, for all he knew.
Nothing. Total, utter silence.
I tried again.
"Edward. Open the door." I raised my voice into what could be construed as a yell. After all, polite manners were probably a little unnecessary considering the direness of the situation.
Nothing still.
I pounded on the wood, growing exasperated. "Open this door right now!" I demanded. "I need to talk to you." Actually, I mentally corrected, you need to talk to me.
"Edward," I repeated, voice growing louder. "Edward."
Finally, after what felt like a million years, and could have only been minutes, or maybe even seconds, I heard some rustling inside the closet. Encouraged, I pounded on the door until my hand felt bruised and swollen, but the pain felt nothing like compared to what I'd felt when I'd feared Edward dead.
Mid-thump, my fist fell not on solid wood, but empty air, and I gaped in surprise as Edward's face glowered at me.
"What the fuck do you want?" Edward growled. "Why can't everyone just leave me the fuck alone?"
"Edward!" I exclaimed, too grateful he was alive and breathing and speaking to care that he was mad. I shoved the door open and flung my arms around him, apparently forgetting all about our last conversation in the euphoric thrill of finding him safe and unharmed.
He staggered back and my weight carried us a little farther into the dark closet. As my eyes adjusted and I pulled away to look around, I absorbed the evidence of what Carlisle had suspected. It smelled like a distillery, but Edward himself was even worse. His skin looked pale and drawn, his eyes bloodshot. … and I thought I saw a full bottle set aside in the corner that could only have been filled by Edward himself. Stomach churning again, I scooted back from him and laid a hand on his chest.
"Edward, what are you doing?" I whispered. "Why are you doing this to yourself?"
He pulled the door closed savagely, slamming it shut and cloaking us in total darkness. The smell from the bottle in the corner grew stronger and I swallowed hard.
I waited for what felt like an eternity. And then another. Still, he said nothing, so I asked again.
"Edward," I pleaded, "talk to me."
When he finally spoke, his voice was rusty, as if it had been unused for a very long time. "It was so easy, so clear, when we were locked up," he said softly, dreamily. "So few choices when you can't leave. Can't go. When someone else is calling all the shots."
"It was," I agreed, "but we made choices anyway. We chose to . . ." I trailed off as I realized what I was about to say, but as I hesitated, I decided that I had hidden how I felt long enough because I was worried that he would be afraid or run. He'd already run. He'd chased me off. There was no shame in me feeling what I felt, even if it was for a man like him.
"I chose to care about you," I said firmly this time. "You chose to care about me."
He was quiet again for a long while. "That wasn't because of where we were. Where we were made it easier for me not to be me. . .for me not to fuck it up. For me to see you clearly."
"It was easier for you to see yourself more clearly, too," I added gently, scooting closer to him and laying a reassuring hand on his arm. "I didn't dream what happened between us. Neither did you. It happened. It just couldn't survive going from the dark to the light. Real life is too complicated for some things."
"I didn't want it to be. I wanted it to keep it," he said wryly, with only the barest hint of a slur to his words. "I wanted to keep you, but it wasn't fair of me to do that to you. Some other girl, maybe. Not you."
So many times I'd read novels where if the main characters just had a real conversation, where when they laid all the cards, even the embarrassing or humiliating ones, on the table, the whole conflict would be resolved. I'd always told myself that if I was in one of those situations, I'd do that. What I had never realized was just how hard it was to expose yourself completely without a certainty that the other person was willing to the same.
I'd never been a gambler. I'd played it safe almost my entire life, but from the beginning of our friendship, from the moment I'd met him, something about Edward had prompted me to throw caution to the wind, and I did so now, rolling the dice and laying every card I owned right out for him to see.
"I wanted to keep you, too. I want to keep you. But I can't, not like this. Not with you resorting to locking yourself in closets drinking bottles of whiskey, and losing it over confrontations with your label. And it's not your actions that scare me. You might pretend to be okay, but you're lying to yourself and to everyone else. You're not okay. You haven't been okay in a long time, and what happened with Niall and Jane blew what was left of you that was okay to bits."
When he didn't say anything, I kept my grip on his leg firm. Unwavering. I didn't want him to think I regretted what I said. I didn't. I would go back and say it a million times. I might have a broken heart—okay, a more broken heart—because of them, but it felt good to finally get the truth off my chest. Like the first step in healing, regardless of what he said or thought or did because of my words.
"I'm not okay." He said it questioningly, as if he was asking himself, testing out the waters of the realization. "I'm not okay."
"You're not okay," I said firmly. "You're definitely not okay."
"I'm not okay," he repeated.
"Do you want to be okay?" I wasn't nearly as sure about this question, but it needed to be said.
"I didn't want to do this," he said quietly. "I did, but I didn't. I wanted to do something normal. Something not crazy, for maybe the very first time in a long time. But the force of it was too strong. I couldn't fight it. I fought it for as long as I could."
"Oh," was the best I could manage. I'd never imagined that he'd done this because there hadn't been anything else to do.
"I fought it because of you," he added so quietly that I almost didn't catch the words. I leaned in closer, nearly resting against him as he continued. "I thought hated you, but I didn't hate you. I hated the way you made me feel. Out of control and crazy and nuts."
"Are you saying you're in this closet because of me?" I asked.
"Yes." He paused. "No. I'm honestly not sure why the fuck I'm in the closet."
"Because it was safe," I reassured him, leaning against him completely. "Because you could control it."
He was quiet for even longer, and I nearly fell asleep in the dark, resting against the comfortable bulk of his body, a comfort that I'd enjoyed so many times while we were locked up by the Red Hands, and after, while we were staying with Esme. I'd only been without it for a few days, but those few days felt like forever.
Finally, he answered the question I'd asked so many minutes previously. "I want to feel okay. Not really for me. I'm used to it, I guess. But for you."
That made me sit up and pay attention. "For me?"
His voice was gruff and matter-of-fact. "You said you didn't want it to end either."
"I don't," I said, confusion spreading through me.
"But you can't be with me, not when I'm like this."
"No," I said steadily, realization dawning. "Not when all I'm doing is waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"And if you knew it wouldn't drop? Or if it did drop, that it wouldn't drop very far?"
I took a deep breath, instantly regretted it and tried not to gag at the combined stench of pee, whiskey and unwashed male. "I wouldn't want it to end. You know that."
"I can't promise you I can really change," Edward said, his voice distant. "I'm not really sure you can change all that much, I mean change who you really are, but I can be better. I want to be better for you."
In the weeks since I'd met him, I'd never once really believed that I'd hear him say those words. Hearing them was unbearably sweet, but I couldn't help the warning bells clanging in my head. "You need to change for you—because you want yourself to be okay," I corrected softly. "Not that I don't appreciate the gesture, because I do. It's . . . amazing," I said, even though even those words were insufficient to express truly how I felt about his confession. "But it needs to be for you, not for me."
I felt him shrug. "If I do it, if I get the help that will make me better, why does it matter?"
"It matters," I said firmly.
"Then I'm doing it for me." His laissez-faire attitude about the whole thing told me that he wasn't really serious; he was just giving me lip service so that I'd believe he was fixing himself for the right reasons, but I wasn't sure he really was. There was only one way to make sure of that, and I hated the thought of tearing myself away from him again, but it had to be done. There was no other way to know for sure.
"Edward, you know, we can't be together while you do this. And I can't give you a promise that we'll be together after either." I said it as seriously as I could, with the hope that he would take it that way.
"I don't understand."
"We can't be together while you get better. After you feel you've made progress, we can check in, I guess, but I won't make you a promise that everything will be fine then either. I don't know if I can promise that."
"I see." His tone of voice told me that he didn't see at all.
"It has to be this way, Edward."
"But this is what you wanted," he said in exasperation. "Why you left in the first goddamn place. Because you wanted me to be better. Well, I'm getting better for you, and that's still not enough."
"It's not that it's not enough," I tried to reason, "it's that I can't know if you can be better until you show me."
"I hate this," he grumbled, and I smiled, secure that he couldn't see in the deep black of the closet.
"I know," I said reassuringly. "It sucks, trying to be okay."
"You're not being fair, either," Edward pointed out, and I was secretly amused at the almost outraged edge to his voice. "If you were being fair, you would give me your word that we could be together after."
"I don't want to make you a promise that I can't keep," I explained. "It could take months or maybe even years. Things could have changed for me."
"They won't change for me," Edward said with certainty and I felt a little breath of relief.
"Probably not for me either," I added.
"Good."
"Now can we get out of this closet? It stinks."
Edward rose to his feet unsteadily and held out a hand for me to grasp. "You know, this is bullshit," he said as held onto the doorknob. "I don't want to do this crap for anyone but you, and if you're not going to promise me . . ." he trailed off and looked at me so directly I felt uneasy, the euphoria of his promise to heal fading in the dark air.
"It's a different kind of promise," I clarified. "A promise to yourself. You can't get better for you if you're worrying about me."
"A promise to myself? That's lame," Edward grumbled and I couldn't help but smile at his annoyance.
"If you get what you want, that's not so lame."
"If you say so," he finally relented. Though he still carried the vestiges of frustration on his face, there was something in the way the air felt as we opened the door and walked outside for a second time—and even though it was as Edward had said, "lame," there was promise in the air. Promise in the way his eyes lingered on me as I led him out of the dark closet.