Thanks so much as always, again, to all of you reading and reviewing. Nearly 2000 reviews? That's crazy and I'm touched and humbled by your support.
And it's time for another unsolicited recommendation from me! Reality Minus Expectations by mjinaspen. Great, mature story-telling.
Diclaimer: Twilight's not mine.
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BPOV
Atlanta
We'd been out on the road for four weeks. Four long miserable blank weeks. I functioned. I performed. I did my very best, although I knew there was no way to give my all. After all, I couldn't actually think about any of the lyrics I sang. Personal connection to the music was out of the question. So I focused on the technical aspects, and the notes, staying in tune, moderating my breathing, negotiating that deathtrap of a set they came up with…whatever it took to get through the performance in one piece. It amazed me but for the most part my act was successful. They told me that tour was a hit, and that we were doing great. Nobody seemed to be aware that I was a zombie. Or maybe it was just nobody cared.
We were in the greenroom of the Fox Theater, waiting for our set to begin. Emmett and Jasper were huddled under the monitor, listening to the local band opening for us, trading comments and critiques. Rose was filing down her nails so they didn't get in the way of her playing. I was, as usual, sitting on the couch, staring at a wall, trying to think about nothing until it was time to go on.
"Hey, kids!" Felix burst into the room, all smiles, a cardboard box in his arms.
Of all the people the studio could have sent to mind us out on the road, did it have to be Felix? He was my least favorite.
"Hey, Felix," Jasper called across the room. Emmett raised a hand in greeting.
"Gather around, kids. I have something special for you," Felix called, setting his box down on the table. Emmett, Jasper and Rose crossed the room in a hurry to Felix's side. I sighed and uncurled myself from the sofa, not really caring at all what Felix had to say, but knowing I was expected to participate in whatever this was.
"Well, kids, this is a big day for any recording artist. One you'll always remember," Felix said, popping the top on the box with a flourish. We all instinctively leaned in as one to see what was inside.
Emmett, Rose and Jasper all gasped in unison. There it was. Stacked in the box, rows and rows of our first CD.
Rose's hand shot out and snatched one off the top greedily. Emmett and Jasper crowded in over her shoulders to look at the little cover with her, forgetting for the moment that there was a full box of copies in front of them.
The three of them began to ooh and ahh over every inch of it, the photo of us on the cover, the artwork, even the freaking typeset. Jasper pulled it out of Rose's hands and opened it, sliding out the booklet inside the front cover. They began to flip through it, as delighted as kids at Christmas. Felix stood watch over them, beaming, drafting off this happy moment of theirs.
I silently reached into the box and pulled out a copy for myself. The cover photo was nice. I remembered that day, that moment, the four of us in Demetri's studio. In between set ups and shots, I had told Rose all about my first night with Edward. I had rolled out of his bed that morning after those amazing twenty four hours together.
My breathing picked up and got shallow.
I flipped the CD over.
On the back was the requisite list of ten tracks, all the songs we'd worked and slaved over. But my eyes skimmed past them all to the bottom of the list, to the bonus track. I knew it would be there. Rose had tried to get it pulled right after the Epic Meltdown, but the album had been rushed through production as it was, to be ready for release in conjunction with the tour. By the time she made the call, it was too late and there was no going back.
I knew it was there, but it still stopped my heart to see it.
Track 11. The Man With The Child In His Eyes- Bella Swan and Edward Cullen
Arr. E. Cullen
The chatter of the others grew faint and muffled in my ears. All I could hear was the roar of my own blood in my veins, the rapid pounding of my heart in my ears.
I was dimly aware of the conversation around me slowing to a halt, of Rose, Emmett, Jasper and Felix stopping to stare at me, and then of them all quietly slipping out of the room to give me my moment alone.
I tried to swallow back the emotion, to stuff it back down, but it wouldn't go, I couldn't repress it.
Before I even registered I was doing it, my arm was arching back, whipping forward, the CD was smashing into a million pieces against the wall on the other side of the room.
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Dallas
Rose and I had just joined Jasper, Emmett and Seth in the green room after getting ready, Emmett was twirling his drumsticks and the local band who was our opening act was half way through their set. Rose was trying to fix my hair, I was staring into space, letting her. Jane, our road manager, came through and handed each of us our mail bundle. The label collected our mail for us while we were away and it arrived every few days at the venue in packets just before the show.
Mine was pre-sorted into various packages. The first was a fat wad of fan mail, which I swore I would get to one day. Another packet contained various propositions and offers from Aro, appearances, endorsements, all for my consideration. I skipped that, too. The last stack was personal mail mostly bills and letters. It included a large manila envelope from a law firm. I didn't recognize the name.
I opened it and pulled out a sheaf of papers. I skimmed through them quickly. It was a stack of legal documents I didn't understand. I went back and read through the first page carefully. The deed to my house. Paper clipped to it was a card from a security company with the security codes for the front gate and the house. Last out of the envelope was a set of new front door keys.
My house.
I held the deed in my trembling hands for a minute, trying to process. My house. That Edward bought for me. I fucking hated the thought of that place now. It only made me think of him, it would only ever make me think of him, and now I fucking owned it. It hardly seemed possible that when he bought it for me, I thought that it meant there was something real beginning between us….The sorrow that I'd been pressing down for weeks momentarily bubbled up and drowned me. I heard the rest of the mail in my hands hit the ground and scatter. I clenched the house keys in my fist so tightly that they cut in to my skin. I didn't feel the pain, but I felt a sticky warm trickle of blood seep between my fingers. The back of my neck tingled and my vision went black as I sank to the floor.
*0*0*
I came awake lying on the couch in the greenroom, but I kept my eyes closed, not yet ready to face the world again. I could smell Rose's perfume, so I knew she was next to me, I could feel her fingers gripping my left hand. My right hand throbbed with pain and cold. I realized I was gripping an icepack. There was a cool washcloth pressed to my forehead. I could hear muffled voices, right outside the door, raised in argument. I cracked my eyes open and saw Rose. Her body was facing me, her hand gripping mine, but her head was turned towards the door, listening intently. Her face was set like stone, furious.
"I could have the doctor here in ten minutes. One shot will do it. It's totally harmless. She'll feel fine, just relaxed and happy. Perfectly able to do the show. People do it all the time." That was Felix's voice.
"There is no fucking way we are doping her up to do the damned show!" That was Jasper, sounding perhaps angrier than I'd ever heard him.
"Well, what do you suggest then, Jasper?" Felix snapped, his annoyance plain.
"Cancel tonight. She's sick. Period," Jasper growled back. "We've got some days off coming up, add a fucking show then if it's that important."
"But…" Felix started again, but Emmett's voice, a low snarl, cut him off.
"She's sick, Felix. Back the fuck off."
There was a long moment of silence from the hall and then footsteps receding. Rose's frame relaxed microscopically and the corner of her mouth twitched up. I closed my eyes again and sank back into welcome oblivion.
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Denver International Airport
I pushed my sunglasses up a little and rubbed my eyes with my fingertips before letting them slide back down into place. I was inside, in the First Class lounge to be exact, but I really didn't want to be bothered by anyone, and you never could tell when someone would accost you, even in the First Class lounge, so I kept my sunglasses on and my baseball cap pulled down low, shadowing my face. Seth could chase off anybody who decided to bother me, but he was slouched in a chair a few feet away, snoozing, and I didn't want to bother him unless I had to.
Jasper, Rose and Em had gone back to LA after Denver, since we had five days off. But I never went back there. I couldn't face it yet. I usually just cooled my heels in the next town, hanging out in the hotel, waiting for them. I'd see them in a few days when they caught up to me in Detroit. Well, I'd see Rose and Em. Jasper had to stay in LA an extra day this time for a photo shoot. A solo photo shoot. Because while everyone had been focused on me and Edward, the most unbelievable thing had transpired.
Jasper had become a heartthrob.
We realized it after the first few tour dates, when the stage door was absolutely mobbed with screaming teenaged girls…all screaming for Jasper. It must have been something about the shaggy blonde hair, the dreamy blue eyes, and the fact that he wrote our music. That gave him some sort of soulful, sensitive artist vibe that the girls just went wild for. It was freaking hysterical to behold. It was one of the few things that made me laugh in these last few weeks; the sight of poor Jasper being mauled by screaming, weeping teenagers.
I was undoubtedly still the center of everyone's fixation. After all, I was involved in a rather scandalous relationship meltdown with the hottest man in Hollywood, and Jasper's fame was decidedly more "Tiger Beat" in nature, but still, he was famous in his own way. Emmett never, ever let it go. He constantly suggested that Jazz phone up the Jonas Brothers for some advice on how to handle unruly packs of thirteen year olds, or that Jazz should maybe spend some time hanging out at the Claire's Boutique in the mall, to better understand his target demographic. Jazz hated the ribbing and the screaming girls frustrated and embarrassed him to no end, but he was holding up alright in the face of losing his anonymity.
His newfound fame meant that he had his own hoard of paparazzi dogging his moves. They were much tamer than what I dealt with, but nonetheless, his life was fairly thoroughly invaded by them. Due to the increased scrutiny, on one of his trips back to LA to see Alice, someone got a shot of them out to dinner together and their relationship was officially outed. Alice, rather than be upset about it, was grimly satisfied, delighted to publicly stake her claim on him and to break the hearts of teenaged girls across America. They made the gossip columns for a while and she gleefully forwarded each and every mention of it to Jasper, much to his chagrin.
At about the same time that Jazz and Alice went public, Rose chose to stage her own personal rebellion against Aro. We were at some event, standing there, having our pictures taken, as usual, when out of nowhere Rose seized Em by the face and stuck her tongue down his throat. And that was that, the sex goddess was officially off the market. Aro and the label execs were all pretty bent out of shape that all of us were going so far off script, but none of us cared anymore. We were all tired of pretending.
I took a sip of my water and looked up at the tv playing over the bar. It was some entertainment news show…of course. And sure enough, right on cue, they started playing a story about me and Edward. Fuck. I thought once they had Jasper to chase around, I might have some relief, but they never seemed to get enough of me. I glanced around the lounge at the smattering of other travelers, but no one was paying attention to the tv. They were lost in their books or newspapers or laptops. I knew I should just keep my head down and ignore it, but curiosity got the better of me and I looked back at the tv to see what they were saying.
The reporter, if you could call that blonde, plastic, twittering bobblehead a reporter, was spouting all the usual crap, that I was "broken hearted but persevering, bravely soldiering on through the tour", while Edward was "hiding out at an undisclosed location in Europe". They hadn't been able to determine yet whether Edward had any company in his seclusion. I told myself that it was all crap and lies, but I still felt the twist of the knife in my chest when the plastic girl said that last part. I couldn't help but wonder if that red haired woman was with him, wherever he was.
I looked down and stared into my water glass. I had to be honest with myself, I wasn't getting over this. Not even a little bit. I'd been through breakups before and even at the worst, lowest moments, some part of me had known that I would get through it, that there would come a time when I was okay and over it. But I couldn't find that part of me now. It felt like I would always be stuck right here, hopelessly in love with him, unable to let it go and move on.
I chanced a look back at the tv. They were showing footage of us on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Fuck. Anything but that fucking night. I couldn't take it. Why couldn't Paris make another sex tape or Angelina adopt another baby so they'd have something else to talk about? This just kept getting worse and worse. I dropped my head down on my folded arms on the bar and prayed for our flight to start boarding.
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Seattle
Our triumphant homecoming.
That's what Seattle was supposed to be. And it pretty much was. We'd been scheduled to do three shows in Seattle but they sold out so fast that the label added a fourth, which also sold out in record time.
Suddenly everybody in Seattle was a fan of Eclipse, everybody reminisced about having seen us play in tiny local bars just last year. Of course, I couldn't remember those armies of Eclipse fans when we actually had been playing in front of twenty people on Sunday nights at the Dugout.
Well, no matter. The actual fans as well as the recent converts were all cheering our return and our success. Because we were undoubtedly a success. The album sales were through the roof. Of course, although no one breathed a word of it out loud, I knew a decent part of that success could be directly attributed to me and the Epic Meltdown. The arrangement with Edward had certainly worked its magic as far as that was concerned.
Word had leaked out early on about the bonus track, about me and Edward performing together on it, and the public was salivating to hear it well before the CD was actually released. Once it hit the market, the sales were astounding. It seemed everybody wanted to get their very own piece of my heart for their personal listening pleasure.
The tour had been a huge success, too, probably for the same reason. Sold out shows in every city. Everybody wanted to come and get a glimpse of me, to see if it showed on my face, I guess. I tried not to think about it. I was still on lockdown. I had a mantra I repeated to myself whenever it got too bad. Emmett, Rose, Jasper…Emmett, Rose, Jasper…No matter what happened, I needed to hold it together for them. They couldn't do this without me. If I failed, we all went down together. I'd come close enough that one night in Dallas, I couldn't let it happen again. I just had to make it through Seattle and then we were done, back home to LA for a while.
But for now I was still in Seattle and at least for today that was okay. I stared out my hotel window at the sheets of rain pelting the glass. Of course it was raining. I don't know why I expected any different. I guess my six short months in LA had spoiled me for sunshine. You couldn't tell if it was morning or afternoon out there.
I started a little at the sudden knock on the door, even though I was expecting it. I turned and headed for the door, moving faster than I had anywhere but on stage for weeks. I undid the catch and threw the door open and for just a moment, the vise around my ribs that had been there for weeks eased just a little and I drew in a deep breath, smiling at the face I found there.
"Jake!"
"Bells!"
I launched myself up at his ridiculous height, throwing my arms around his neck and planting a kiss on his cheek. His massive arms curled around me, nearly crushing me in his embrace as he pulled me up off the floor, my feet dangling.
"Damn, Jake! Don't break me!"
He laughed, but set me back down and pulled back to look at me. The brilliant white smile dimmed on his tanned face.
"You don't look so great, Bells," he said with concern, "I thought fame was supposed to agree with people."
I rolled my eyes a little and slapped his arm playfuly, before pulling him into the suite behind me and closing the door.
"Well, it's nice to see you, too, asshole! And it's not the fame, Jake, it's all the rest."
He nodded, but said nothing. I wasn't sure how much he knew about everything that had happened.
I waved a hand at the couch and he sat, snagging my hand and pulling me down to sit next to him. It really was great to see him. He was so familiar, so easy. I found myself curling my feet up underneath me and snuggling into his side, just like I used to a year ago when he'd come visit in Seattle and we'd crash in the living room to watch movies.
Jake and I had ended as a couple when I left Forks for Seattle, but he would never leave my life, I knew that. He'd known me literally my whole life, always there, just like Em, Rose and Jasper. The end of us hadn't been his idea, and I secretly suspected that he still harbored feelings for me, but he never let on if he did. He said he wanted to stay friends and I took him at his word and over the years, I'd been insanely grateful that he did, especially now.
He stretched his long arms across the back of the sofa.
"So, tell me everything, Bells. What's it like being so damned famous?"
I laughed and gave him a playful shove. "You should know me well enough by now to know I couldn't give a shit about that part."
"Oh, come on, you're not even a little excited by all the pictures and the red carpets and the magazine covers and shit?" he was laughing, teasing me. He knew I wasn't.
I wanted to hang onto our light, easy banter and respond with something funny and sarcastic, but out of nowhere, I felt a surge of sorrow well up and I couldn't control it.
"Jake," I nearly choked, "if you knew what it was like sometimes…how it's been for the past six weeks…"
His arm came down around my shoulder and he pulled me into him.
"Hey, I'm sorry, Bells. I didn't mean to upset you. I know all about you…and, um… Edward Cullen."
"You do?"
He nodded, then snorted a little with laughter, "Who'd have ever guessed… you and that movie star? But yeah, Emmett told me all about it. I'm sorry. I can see by your face that it's really done a number on you, Bells."
I sighed against his chest, drawing a little strength just from being so close to him. I hadn't felt so safe since….no, better not go there.
"It's not just…him, Jake. Yes, that's miserable, but it's all the rest, too. It would have been bad enough if it just happened to me in private. But having to live it all out in public like this, having all these strangers dissect every word I say and every move I make… and they tell these lies like you can't believe. It astounds me what people write about me. I try not to let it get to me, but it's hard. And I'm so tired." My voice got high and pinched on the last part. I would not cry, not now.
Jake rubbed my back gently and I felt him kiss the top of my head.
"I'm sorry it's been so hard for you. You're not really cut out for all this craziness, huh? In a way, it would have been better if it happened to Rose instead. She's hard as nails. But you're so soft, so open…you always were."
I lifted my face off his chest and pulled back to smile up at him. He always just got me. Jake reached a hand up and stroked my cheekbone and I leaned into his hand a little, letting my eyes close. I sighed with relief at the sensation, the comfort of it. I hadn't realized how much I'd been craving and missing just this kind of simple contact.
I felt Jake's lips on my forehead, lingering there. His arm around my shoulders tightened incrementally, and suddenly I could feel it in the air between us, Jake's desire.
I froze, unsure of what I should do, of what I wanted to do.
It felt so good to be back in Jake's arms. Could I do it? Could I turn my face up to him and let him kiss me? Being back with Jake would be easy, I knew it. And I knew that I would find comfort and respite from all this with him. I could escape my life a little, retreat back into what I'd been then, when it had all been so simple and straightforward.
But had it ever really been so simple? That was why I broke up with Jake when I moved to Seattle. I'd always been moving on, my eyes on bigger things. Jake had wanted me to spend my life with him in La Push, and stay just like I was. Even then, when I was nobody, without a clue about how my life would turn out, I knew I wanted to see more of the world than Forks and I wanted to be more than that girl. For better or for worse, I was too far down this road to turn back now. I'd come too far, changed too much. I couldn't turn back the clock. Sure, it would feel good to revert to that for a little while, but I would only be hiding from reality.
And it would be so unfair to Jake, to use him, to hide in him that way. He loved me, in many ways, but now clearly, in that way, still. And I didn't love him. Because I was still fucking in love with Edward. Goddammit. I didn't want to be, but I was.
Jake was still pressing his lips gently against my forehead, waiting for some hint from me. It came in the form of my tears, leaking out of my clenched eyes.
"I'm sorry, Jake, I just can't."
"You know I would take care of you, Bells," he murmured.
"I know that. And I wish I could. God, I wish I could. But I just…I still…"
"You still love him," Jake finished my sentence for me softly.
I nodded, the tears coming faster now.
Jake let out a huge sigh and lifted his face away from mine, conceding defeat. But Jake was still Jake. He wrapped his huge arms around me and pulled me in tight against his chest and held me there while I cried myself dry for another man.
"I don't deserve you, Jake," I choked out between sobs.
"But you'll always have me, Bells. I promise."
I buried my face in his chest and prayed for the memory of Edward to let me go, knowing that it never really would.