Chapter 43
"I've had just about enough of this, Bella. Your mother and I want to talk to you right now!" My father's fists pounded on my door, much like they had the last two days when I returned from work and went directly to my room without speaking to them. All I wanted to do was watch Baby Baby Baby and die a slow death.
"I'm fine, just leave me alone." I spoke into the pillow as I pressed the start button.
I heard my mother's softer hand brushing up and down against the door, and almost felt bad for causing her any anguish. Almost. "Whatever it is, honey, we can fix it." My parents started hush-arguing behind my closed door, but I didn't care.
Fix it. Fix it.
How do you fix something that's so beyond fucked up? How do you fix something you almost started believing never happened until you see it with your own eyes on a laptop screen? He'd almost been that dream that dissipates the moment you wake up. The one you reach out to as you try to stay asleep just so you can revel in it a few moments longer.
Fix it. There was nothing to fix, because there was just nothing.
His words returned.
You are nothing.
I pulled my phone out and stared at the picture he'd taken, the one I remembered and found days ago. It was a hazy photo taken in a dark bedroom with just the light from the side table lamp the tattoo guy used. Me, lying naked across Edward, being branded with everything that symbolized him. His face pressed to my neck and his eyes mischievously glancing at the camera. My eyes are closed and my hand is trailing up my thigh. I could almost feel my body spark at the memory of the tattoo gun sting and the bliss of Edward's mouth and body against me.
You are nothing.
I was nothing.
Nothing. That motherfucker told me I was nothing.
Resentment boiled in my body as I stared at that picture, our faces blurring and becoming phantoms.
It was my mistake, getting so involved with him and losing sight of why I wanted that dream job in the first place, but it was him that gladly took it from me without a thought and crushed it.
It was him that was nothing.
Him.
Nothing but a cruel, deaf rock star that was about to lose the only thing he loved more than himself. Lose the only thing he lived for. He'd be the one the magazines would write 'whatever happened to' until they find him dead in a crappy motel room surrounded by no one.
Surrounded by his own nothing.
No longer the beautiful, wispy dream you cling to, he was now that moment you step off a curb in your just-about-there sleep and jerk awake.
One by one, I took all of Edward's pictures down. I didn't do it in a blaze of anger, I didn't rip them to shreds and scream and wail myself around my bedroom like the Tasmanian devil he was in the bus.
I put the pictures and magazines and everything else that bore his likeness into a box I ditched in my closet and shut the door. After some thought, I decided not to delete the phone picture. I needed it. Needed it as a reminder that I was better than him, better than what he made me feel like.
I grabbed my suitcase and an armful of clothes.
I couldn't stay there. Couldn't keep working in that damn shop, couldn't live in my childhood home with parents that didn't understand me. I'd changed over that summer, I'd blossomed. Every embarrassing moment, every mistake and uncomfortable interaction, each time I saw that stage from the sidelines and was a part of the inner circle, something in me grew. Even with all the horrible and messy, I'd never felt more alive. I knew what I wanted my life to be and it was time I forged my own path.
My finger hovered over the dial button, but eventually I pressed it. A huge smile crossed my face at the sound of the booming voice on the other end.