A/N: Sorry for the delay, my lovely readers. I know this story hasn't really caught on, but I'm hoping it will. I wanted to do something different, and I hope that this is something different enough to interest readers.
Thank you to my beautiful beta, Adrena. Your encouragement keeps me plugging away;)
This chapter is all in Edward's point of view, and it is very introspective. You'll see more interaction with his friends later, and the reasons behind his double life will be explained. Keep tuned!
EPOV
Oh, the outrage. The seething anger. I hated it when people judged me, but Bella's reaction to my secret seemed to be a thousand times more grating than anybody else's before her.
Why? Who knew. All I knew was that I wanted to punch a fucking wall and let the pain take my thoughts away from that look of ridiculous disappointment on her face as she confronted me in that empty classroom.
Didn't anybody ever tell her that life wasn't fair? Did she still believe in Santa Claus, too? Maybe she'd never had to go through the kinds of things most of us did, so her youthful optimism was still intact. Perhaps she just expected things to always go the way she wanted them to. I scoffed inside my head, thinking it must be nice to live in such blissful ignorance.
She thought she'd hidden her hope that I must be just like her, but I could see it from a mile away. I could only assume, based on her friends' reactions to introducing us and the way she stood up against the stage during my band's performance, that she was a pretty big fan of OCS.
She'd obviously wanted to believe that I was going to come out and say that Edward Cullen, Conservative Christian, was all just a big joke that she could laugh about with me.
But that just wasn't how it was. For years now, I'd been an insanely confusing mix between Edward Cullen and Anthony Masen. It felt as if I had two complete people inside of my body.
When she'd torn into me after class on Saturday, I'd watched the emotions play across her openly expressive face; by the time I left, I'd felt like we were five years old and I'd smashed her doll house.
It was times like these that I wondered why I even bothered with the multiple personalities; I just couldn't please anyone, least of all myself. It seemed I was always disappointing people, letting them down...I could never be exactly what they wanted from me.
But what was I supposed to do? When my mother died, my entire world exploded. The rug was ripped out from beneath me, and all of the things I'd been in the process of figuring out about who I was and what I wanted to be were completely halted.
So here I was, three years later, with a stunted sense of self that continuously warred with the expectations of those around me. All I'd ever wanted was to be happy, and to follow my dreams...and now all I wanted was to feel like there was one entity inside of me, one unified identity that didn't require two separate names.
Because I was Edward Cullen, the upright conservative who had a strong faith in God and a strong sense of right and wrong...and then there was Anthony Masen, the passionate animal rights activist who also had a strong sense of right and wrong. I couldn't really say who I was deep inside, because these two people were equally dominant.
I threw my books down on my bed and quickly loosened the tie hanging around my neck like a noose. It was Wednesday, and that meant my father, Carlisle, would be at the hospital doing rounds until tomorrow morning.
In other words, Wednesdays were my band practice days.
I threw my white button-down shirt on my bedroom floor and dropped trou so I could shower before I had to leave. I stalked to the bathroom connected to my bedroom, only stopping in front of the mirror to check the healing on my newest tattoo. The quote from Elie Weisel ran the expanse of skin directly beneath my collarbone, reading "to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all."
The words had so many different meanings for me, but today they made me feel like a hypocrite because I'd walked out on Bella with the appearance of indifference to her feelings. Her anger and confusion had affected me, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
But damn if that chick wasn't a basket case full of fucking bullshit! She was so judgmental and close-minded, it was completely amazing. She obviously had a huge need to change people's minds about veganism and animal rights, but her way was entirely too confrontational. She didn't even seem to give people who weren't like her a chance, and that grated me on many levels.
She sat there in class every week, spouting bullshit about her liberal politics, but in the end, she was just as close-minded as anybody else. She was a huge hypocrite, and I'd gotten in enough debates with her to know by now what a bitch she could really be when she was riled.
I realized I was wasting a shitload of time mentally griping about some dumb girl when I should be getting ready for band practice, so I turned on the shower and shook the rest of those thoughts away. I stepped in when the water was warm enough and hissed when it hit my new tattoo, the heat making it feel like a bad sunburn. I hurried through my shower routine and went to get dressed.
The clothes I wore when I was Anthony Masen were entirely different from the clothes I wore as Edward Cullen; for instance, today I'd gone to class in a white button-down shirt with a green tie and brown slacks. My shoes were always shined to perfection, and they always matched my belts because Carlisle would have nothing less than immaculate perfection when it came to my appearance.
As I was headed to hang out with the guys, I could now be in Anthony's wardrobe, consisting of mainly black band t-shirts and black or blue Dickies, with Chucks, Vans, or Vision Streetwear high tops. I almost always wore a hat in the attempt to hide my unique reddish hair, on the off chance that I might run into someone who knew Carlisle.
I pulled on the dark Army-green cap and adjusted it to sit low over my face. After throwing on my belt with the massive silver cow head on it, I grabbed my keys and headed out the door to Emmett's house.
On the drive, I pounded my fist on the steering wheel, shouting along with Earth Crisis. The music was getting me pumped for band practice, and I found myself trying to pull up the anger from my encounter with Bella to fuel the fire starting to burn inside. It always helped the music if I was amped when we played.
I couldn't stand people who assumed the world owed them something, especially not when they started looking to me to fulfill their needs. After all, I had plenty of my own needs that were already neglected in the face of my father's demands on me.
I sped toward Emmett's, feeling pumped and primed for my only outlet- my music. If I could pinpoint one central point of my identity, both as Edward and as Anthony, it had to be the music. The feel of bringing my words to life, watching the crowds go wild as I poured all the emotion and passion into my songs, was enough to keep me from turning my back on it, no matter what Carlisle wanted from me.
I grimaced, feeling that familiar guilt climb up inside of me. I tried to remind myself of how things had been before my mom died, when my father had been happy and in love. Times were different then; he'd been confused but also grudgingly okay with the choices I'd started to make in my late teens.
Now all that was left of the man I used to have so much fun with was an angry, bitter shell. He spent most of his time working his hands to the bone or putting on a good show for his cronies from the hospital. If he wasn't cutting someone open, he was playing golf with his buddies and pretending that his world was perfectly controlled, including his son.
The old Carlisle hated golf; he'd said it was a past time for old windbag doctors who had nothing better to do but waste tons of time and money on a sport that was about as exciting as getting a root canal.
The new Carlisle could play golf with the best of them, and I never once spoke up to remind him of his old stance on the subject, because at least it meant he got out of the house for awhile.
I reigned in the depressing thoughts as I pulled up in front of Emmett's house and climbed out, my fingers itching to grip my guitar. We were working on some new songs, and I had a feeling that this next album would be one of our best.
We'd always hung back when it came to our music, at least on the publicity front, because none of us were anxious to put the band above everything else we had going in our lives. Jasper had his fiancée Alice to think about, and Emmett was a newlywed.
As for me, I just couldn't go and leave my dad here alone. The man may be bitter and angry, but he was still my father and I loved him.
I knocked on the front door and felt the excitement I always felt when I was about to play music. Emmett threw the door open with a big shit-eating grin. "Hey, man! What's up?" he asked as he pounded me on the back enthusiastically.
I smiled wryly at him. "Not much, bro. Is Jazz already here?" I asked.
"Yeah, he's just out back. The garage is fuckin' hot today, so we had to kick on the window AC unit," he replied and I nodded.
I was headed out the back door to the garage when I heard Emmett's wife, Rose, yelling for him. His smile spread and a certain glint began to shine in his eyes; I groaned, knowing exactly what that look meant.
"Hey man, I've gotta go help the wife real quick. I'll be out in a minute, k?" he said.
I groaned but waved him off, knowing that he'd be much longer than "a minute." What could I do, anyway? They were newlyweds. I didn't understand it, but maybe that's just because I've only ever had sex one time and it was completely awkward and too embarrassing to even dwell on.
I guess that's what you get when you lose your virginity to a girl at Christian Camp in the ninth grade, though.
I shook my head and found Jasper in the garage, tuning his bass. He looked up when I entered and laughed. "Emmett and Rose at it again?" he joked.
"Ugh. Yeah, probably. Those two are like rabbits." I said with a shudder.
"Whatever, man. One day soon it'll be me, and I know I won't be complaining," he replied with a wistful grin.
I decided to change the subject. "So, how is Alice, anyway? I didn't see her at the show last weekend," I said.
He looked up from strumming the strings. "She was there, and she said she even looked for you, but nobody saw you," he said, looking at me with curiosity.
"Oh no, a new girl in her church group?" I guessed, thinking about how much Alice liked to try and set me up with every available girl she met.
He scoffed. "Yeah, probably," he conceded.
I shrugged and walked over to pick up my guitar, admiring the way it gleamed in the overhead lights of the garage. I had to leave my band equipment here because I didn't want to get into it with Carlisle every time he saw the evidence of my other life.
We jammed for a little while, talking about the new songs and enjoying the cool air coming from the AC. Being July in Washington, the weather was muggy and stifling, so the cold air pumping from the AC unit was welcome.
Twenty minutes later, Emmett came bounding into the garage with messy hair and a fat grin threatening to break his face apart. "You guys ready to ROCK?!" he yelled, holding up his metal hands.
Jasper rolled his eyes and flipped him off as he stood up, ready to play. The drums began to pound and Jasper's bass line ripped through the small garage. I felt the blood pumping in my veins as I joined in on my guitar before shouting out the first verse of the song.
Band practice was the highlight of my week, and it went a long way in taking my mind off all the shit that had been swirling around inside my head. We played for three hours, working and reworking the new songs until we started feeling more confident about them.
After we were done practicing, we gathered in the kitchen, all sweaty, worn out, and exhilarated. Rosalie had cooked dinner, and we dug into the field roast with gusto. The salty, savory flavor of the roast was accompanied by Rosalie's famous maple-brown sugar Brussels sprouts. After dinner, I probably ate my weight in vegan pumpkin cheesecake, but I didn't care. I'd just work it off at the breast cancer marathon on Friday.
We all hung out for awhile after we stuffed our faces, watching movies and ribbing each other. I never mentioned the situation with Bella Swan because I didn't think they needed to know. After all, none of them understood why I wasn't able to reconcile the two sides of my life like they were.
The guys never had to question who they were; they just knew. It was never about being a vegan activist versus being a conservative Christian...it was all about being both.
Unfortunately, I could never figure out how to find that same balance they did, because they didn't have the same conflicts within their families. Jasper's family had raised him as a vegetarian, while Emmett's mom had recently taken the plunge into veganism after watching Earthlings with us.
I wondered why I was being so melancholy and nostalgic tonight, and it angered me to feel the old bitterness seeping in. I'd grown up a lot since my mother died, and I knew more about the reality of adulthood than I had when I was an angry, depressed teenager.
I decided to take a drive before I headed home, so I said my goodbyes and fielded Rose's concerned looks and hugs. Women were like that; always seeing past your bullshit to the truth beneath the facade. I loved Rose, but we weren't close enough for me to get into all of this with her.
As I climbed into my car and headed toward the waterfront, I considered the situation. Bella Swan had made me feel like crap, but that didn't have to mean anything. I was still stuck in the same situation as I had always been. I'd managed to keep myself afloat, never dropping below the surface of things to truly think about why I did the things I did.
The waterfront was quiet and deserted, and I found a lonely piece of driftwood to sit on while I stared out at the endless expanse of water. I could have put my earphones in and listened to music, but I preferred the silence that made my solitude complete.
I sat there, huddled into my black Dickies coat with the hood on my sweatshirt up over my head to ward off the wind coming from the water. The sound of the ocean crashing against the rocks a few feet in front of me soothed the anger inside of me, but the sadness that always threatened was there, just waiting.
In the three years since my mother's death from breast cancer, I'd lost so much of the person I was becoming. It was up to me not to rock the boat, and that meant growing the fuck up.
After about an hour of brooding on the waterfront, I decided to head home and get some sleep. I had to spend the day tomorrow preparing for my radio show at the school, and I wasn't ready for it at all.
On the drive home, I played along with my mood and listened to Bon Iver and Sunny Day Real Estate. The pensive mood of the music enveloped me, making me feel even more isolated. I thought of my mom...her beautiful smile, her voice as she sang while she baked my father and me cookies, and all of the other tiny things that make me ache so much, like the way she could cook pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head.
I let a few tears loose before I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white and clamped my jaw, effectively stemming the flow. I hadn't cried over my mom's death in a couple years, and it always made me feel weak and helpless whenever I did.
I pulled up in front of my house and frowned when I saw Carlisle's sleek black Mercedes parked in its usual spot. The lights in the living room were on, so that meant he was really here. I climbed out of my car and headed inside, bracing myself for the inevitable tense exchange.
"Hey, Dad, I'm home," I called when I entered the house, locking the door behind me.
I heard the chair in his study creek, so I headed in that direction. I turned the lights off in the living room as I passed it and continued down the hallway until I reached the door to his study.
Behind the desk, Carlisle sat with a heavy medical text in one hand and a half-empty glass of scotch in the other. The light from his reading lamp glinted off his reading glasses and highlighted the gray hair at his temples.
I rapped my knuckles on the door frame and waited for him to look up. When he did, he smiled and set his glass down. "Edward, did you just get in?" he asked, glancing at the clock.
"Yeah, I was just hanging out with Em and Jasper," I replied, my shoulders hunching a bit as I shoved my hands into the pockets on my hoodie. Carlisle nodded and gestured to the seat in front of his desk, so I walked over and sat down.
"Don't you usually work on Wednesday nights?" I inquired, wondering why he was here.
"Yes, but Dr. Frisk wanted to change shifts, so here I am. How's school? Is Allan treating you right?" he asked as he placed his bookmark in the book before setting it down next to the glass of scotch. My eyes roved to the decanter at his elbow, surreptitiously trying to discern how much alcohol was missing since the last time he'd had some.
It looked like he'd only had this one glass, so I felt myself relax a bit. I kept waiting for my father to turn into an alcoholic like his father before him after my mother's death, but Carlisle seemed to be a responsible drinker thus far.
"Yeah, Allan's fine. He talked to me about helping him on this school-sponsored trip to Washington D.C. following this semester," I said, knowing he would encourage me to go and also knowing that I would say yes.
"That sounds like fun. You should go, don't you think?" he asked, his eyes brightening slightly. "It would look fantastic on your college applications."
Ah, and there we go. I tamped down the automatic resentment that welled up inside of me when he mentioned college applications; I'd been at an ivy league university before, and it was the last place I wanted to be ever again.
I just nodded my head and said, "Yeah, I guess," as noncommittally as I possibly could.
We sat there in awkward silence for a moment. He broke first, asking, "So Emmett and Jasper...those are your, um, band mates, right?" His face looked distinctly uncomfortable.
"Yeah... they also go to church with us. Emmett plays the drums for the worship band and Jasper helps with the set up and break down every Sunday," I told him, hoping that would make a difference in his opinion of them.
No such luck. His mouth turned down at the corners and his eyebrows drooped as he recalled their faces. "Those guys? I don't know if they're such good people for you to be hanging around with, Edward."
I bit back the bitterness and schooled my face into a bland expression. "And why not?" I asked.
"Edward, watch the tone," he warned. I fought the urge to grimace. "You're going places, and those guys obviously aren't. They look like hoodlums with all those tattoos and I know for a fact that the drummer guy never even finished high school!"
I sighed. "Dad, they're good guys. You don't even know them!" I gripped the armrests on the chair, my knuckles white as I tried to control the anger rising up inside my chest.
"I don't have to know them to know their type, son. You're better than they are, and you'll see that soon enough when you get accepted back into Stanford," he replied, his tone adamant and final.
"Unbelievable!" I exclaimed through clenched teeth. My hands were beginning to hurt where the edges of the wooden armrests were cutting into the flesh.
"Edward, I'm not going to discuss this any further. You know how I feel about your band, and now you know how I feel about these people you're running with. Case closed," he replied. Without giving me another look, he lifted his book and opened it back to the place he'd left off.
I shook with the impotent frustration and got up, walking to the door. Before I left, I turned and looked at him one last time.
He sat in a pool of dim light, casting a circle around him. The effect of the lamp's light made him look alone and lonely, and the old familiar pain drifted back up into my heart as I watched him reading with the frown still on his face.
I left quietly, closing the door behind me. I loved my father, I really did; he was the only family I had left in this world, and he used to be my best friend. It was that which kept me going whenever we had arguments like this one.
I'd given up so much to please him since my mother's passing, and I'd always thought that it would be enough to keep us together.
When I got to my bedroom, I threw my clothes on the floor and walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth. My eyes stayed glued to my face in the mirror, refusing to look down at the new tattoo that challenged me to speak up and change things.
After I was done getting ready for bed, I walked back to my bed and climbed in naked. I grabbed the remote for my stereo and turned some music on while I laid there trying to calm the frustration still zinging through my veins.
Yes, I was a master at keeping my head afloat in this business of having two identities. So many people got what they wanted from me without ever knowing what it cost me to make them happy. I just went along, floating...floating...floating.
The only difference was now, I felt like I was drowning.