Whoa. One review. I'm special.
Not really. You know, it's not going to hurt you to tell me what you think of the story.
By the way, I changed the summary a little. )
Disclaimer: Last time I checked, I didn't own it. WAIT! –checks again- Okay, we're good. Still don't own it.
It was around two hours later when I heard the hushed voices coming from the kitchen area. Only moving my head slightly upwards to try and see something, I couldn't make out much besides the glow pale glow of Edward's body and another larger body, which was also glowing.
"So this is where you've been," the voice said jokingly.
"Shh," Edward's voice said quietly. "You'll wake her up."
"Too late," the mysterious person said, pointing over to where I was on the couch. I sank down not wanting to be seen so quickly. The two were in front of me in a second.
"Dan," Edward said, clearly exasperated. "We have another visitor."
"You're Emmett!" I said gleefully. How could I not recognize him before?
"Woah, Ed, did you tell her about us? Not cool, man," Emmett said disapprovingly.
"She already knew," Edward told him coolly. For a moment, it looked as if he considered telling him about Twilight, but he didn't. "She knew who I was before I said anything."
"Whatever. So how do we get home?"
"Yeah, um," Edward stalled. "That's a really good question."
"I have plenty of room here," I said to Emmett hopefully.
"So you're saying that you have no idea how to get home?" Emmett asked in disbelief.
"I really have no idea how we even got here," Edward sighed. "You should meet Danny, though. You haven't been formally introduced."
"I'm really named Danielle, but everyone calls me Dan or Danny," I informed.
"I'm Emmett Cullen, Eddie's big brother." He laughed loudly.
"You two will probably get along very well," Edward grinned. He was probably right. He reminded me a lot of Andy. I supposed Edward had already figured me out for being a girl who mostly toughed it out with the guys. Actually, maybe it wasn't that hard to figure out.
"Yeah. Maybe." I shrugged indifferently. Edward only laughed.
"But, Dan, do you honestly not care if we reside here until we find a way home?" he asked, actually concerned that they were putting me out.
I waved it off. "Come on. You don't eat, and you don't dirty sheets. You're the easiest houseguests ever."
He chuckled. "If you're sure."
Then I remembered. "Oh!" I said, grabbing my cell phone. "Emmett, I hope you like amusement parks."
"Like them? I love them!" he exclaimed, and I giggled. I had guessed as much.
I flipped the phone open. "Dyl?" Hey, listen. Edward's older brother just arrived. You have room for one more, right?"
"Sure!" Dylan chirped happily. He was just like a little kid sometimes. "I'll make Adam drive his Navigator!"
"Great," I laughed. "I'll talk to you later." I shut the phone and smiled. "Problem averted."
"We're sorry we woke you up," Edward murmured softly in his beautiful, velvety voice.
"It's all cool," I disagreed. "I should write a note anyway." I scribbled out a note to my mom, explaining where I would be when she came home the following day. I knew she wouldn't mind; sometimes she joked about the guys, but I knew that she trusted them with me. Besides, in our situation, I was given opportunities to lie, and she appreciated that I never really did. Well, besides now that I was housing two fictional vampires, but that one might be a little hard to explain.
"Danny, do you want to sleep in your own bed?" Edward asked, extremely thoughtfully, might I add.
"It's cool. Where else will you guys hide without you feeling the need to jump my bones in my sleep and suck my blood?" He frowned at this, and opened his mouth, but I continued, beating him to it once again. "No, seriously. I'm going to go back to sleep on the couch. Besides, I don't think I could make it up the stairs." I yawned to further prove my point.
"I could carry you," Edward offered, but it sounded more menacing as he inched closer.
"Like I'd let you." I rolled my eyes.
"We could make it so you didn't have a choice," Emmett pointed out, inching closer as well.
"But you would never do that to someone who was being hospitalized as I am if it were against their will," I said cautiously, feeling myself back up a step. I looked at Emmett, and he shrugged. I knew he would do anything to get a laugh, just short of hurting me. When I looked at Edward, he seemed to confirm my thoughts with a smirk.
Great. This was the bad part of hanging out with mostly guys. They thought it was hilarious when they picked you up with you screaming to put you back down. It was especially not good for me, when I couldn't stand not being in control of myself, if even for a moment.
I turned on my heels and stalked back to the couch, just daring one of them to so much as follow me. "Now I'm going to sleep, because I can imagine us being awake for most of tomorrow night," I snapped, shutting the light. As I drifted off the slumber, I thought I heard a vampiric snicker, but I might have imagined it.
I woke up for second time in as many days to someone nudging my shoulder. I groaned and sleepily grabbed at them to hit them.
"Dan, isn't it a little late to be sleeping?" my dad asked, and I groaned a little more while forcing my eyes to open all the way. Of course, he had to come home the one time I'm hiding two guys in the house.
"Late night," I yawned. I noticed he was showered and dressed, which was extremely rare to see before one oclock. I realized he must have done this somewhere else because he smelled unfamiliar. He must have just stopped in for something. "Leaving?"
"Yeah. I'm going to Ft. Lauderdale for a few days to see Bill." Then, almost as an afterthought, he added: "Wanna come?"
It was not odd for my father to offer me a chance to come with him to wherever he was going. If it were two weeks earlier, I might have said yes, if only to see all his friends again that I missed so much. It was probably why I was that much more comfortable around guys than girls. They had always been my babysitters , them and Andy. Nowadays, I barely saw them, except for a couple times when I would say yes to my dad to take me with him to Florida or the shore.
"No thanks, Dad," I politely refused. "I'm already going to shore tonight."
"With Alicia?" he asked hopefully. She was only female friend that I brought around the house. She hadn't been home for the whole summer, but I wasn't surprised to know that he didn't remember this.
"No," I sighed. "She's in Mexico for the summer."
"Oh." He made a face, as if he'd smelled something bad. "You're going with Dylan and Adam?"
I couldn't blame him for being weary. He thought of them as hoodlums, and even thought they were the furthest things from it, he was, after all, a dad. "And James," I added.
His expression immediately relaxed. He like James, they got along well. "Don't be too late," he told and I nodded.
"I won't," I promised, knowing I could stay there for two weeks and he probably wouldn't know. While I never really lied to my mom, I could say anything to my dad and she wouldn't know if it were the truth or not.
He bent to kiss my head. "Bye, sweetheart."
"See ya." I was extremely content with going back to sleep after that, but as soon as I heard the door slam, Edward was standing in the room, no Emmett in sight. He didn't speak, he just pinched the bridge of his noise the way that had been so often described.
"It figures he would come home while I'm hiding two guys in the house," I said lightly, trying to break the subtle tension in the room.
"You never told me you had a dad," he said, looking at me. His beauty was so breathtakingly gorgeous that I nearly lost my train of thought. I was almost… unreal. Oh yeah, I reminded myself. He is unreal. He's a character in a book.
I remembered what he said and concentrated very hard on not acting like a stupid fangirl. "Well, Edward, the egg needs to get fertilized somehow," I smirked.
"Ha-ha." He took a seat in the chair he had been accustomed to sitting in. "But… It scared me to hear an unfamiliar man's voice. I thought…well, let's just say that it's a good thing he started thinking about why you were sleeping on the couch and not in your bed. Otherwise…" His voice trailed. I wanted to laugh out loud. He was trying to protect me! It was touching. I could even imagine him freezing up when he heard my dad's voice.
I shrugged. "Sorry. He's not home often. I didn't expect him."
He frowned more defiantly now. "I wonder… how does that work?"
"Well, my parents are going through a divorce. It'll be finalized when the house gets sold, but neither of them seems too anxious to fix it up for sale." I was confused. Hadn't he seen it all, what with him reading minds and such? My current family issues couldn't possibly be that odd.
"Oh. So, you don't see him a lot?" Well, duh.
"No. "He's usually… somewhere else, working, or with his friends."
Edward looked like he might have something else to say, but shook his head. "So, breakfast time for the human?"
"Hm? Oh, sure. I'll make myself some eggs or something. Is Emmett reading Twilight?"
"No." Edward froze, and I felt like I had said something wrong. "He's taking a walk around the block or something. I don't… want him to read that book. Besides the part about us being vampires, it's not really accurate. There is no Bella Swan. Knowing Emmett, he'd try to find her. So, I figure that it's better if he didn't know if Twilight even existed. For now, I just told him that in this world, the Cullens are famous. They just don't know what we look like."
"Oh. Right." I threw two eggs in a pan on the stove. "Well, does Emmett know how to get back? I mean, he's not used to Philly. Granted, this is the northeast, but north Philly isn't somewhere you want to get lost…"
He laughed, the beautiful sound coming out easily. "Relax, Dan. He's perfectly fine. Remember the whole vampire thing? He can protect himself."
"Good point." I threw salt on my eggs and took a bite. "You two are so gentle and cuddly. It's easy to forget that you're dangerous."
"Please don't forget that, Danny," he said darkly. "At any moment, I could literally snap you in half, or even bite you in a moment of weakness, a lapse of control."
I stood, grinning. "I feel completely safe around you, Edward. Besides, Emmett's here, so he'll stop you from eating me."
"Sure, sure," he sighed, smiling now, but I knew it hadn't left his mind.
"So when are we leaving to go to the amusement park?" A voice said from the doorway. It was unmistakably Emmett.
"Probably in a few hours. Who knows, one of them will probably sleep in."
Emmett took a seat next to me. "What are your friends' names?"
"Dylan, Adam, and James," I informed him, standing to put my plate in the dishwasher.
"You don't have any friends that are girls?" His mouth hung open. "How does that one work?"
"Yeah, and one of them is in love with her, huh, Danny?" Edward asked, smirking mischievously, his eyes glinting with humor.
"NO!" I shouted, a little louder than necessary. "I think I would know if my best friend was in love with me."
"She thinks she knows more than me, even though I heard his thoughts. It's really actually kind of cute." Edward turned to Emmett and smiled.
Emmett laughed. "Eddie, you gotta show me which one loves her." This probably wouldn't turn out great.
"Alright, that's enough. I'm going upstairs to get ready for tonight. Feel free to borrow Andy's clothes." I turned around and started up the stairs to the room I hadn't been in for two days.
When I pushed open the door, I gasped. The first thing that came to mind was the scent. I may not have been a vampire with super smelling powers, but there was no mistaking the wonderful smell wafting from the inside of my room. It reminded my of Edward when he kissed me the night before. It was beautiful.
The next thing I noticed was my computer desk that was completely destroyed, not to mention the actual computer lying on the ground, no doubt broken as well. I ran over to them, my mouth hanging wide open. "Emmett… Edward…" I was surprised that my mouth could even form words. "GET UP HERE!"
They were already behind me. "Yeah, Emmett, I think she noticed," Edward said sarcastically.
"You can start explaining now." I crossed my arms, narrowing my eyes on Emmett, letting him get the full view of my death glare, but it was Edward who spoke up.
"The new one is on its way," he said, his tone upbeat.
"Yeah, and what am I supposed to tell my family when they ask where I got a brand new computer?" I focused my gaze on Edward.
"I'm sorry, Danny," Emmett said, and he took a step towards me. "I got really bored at night, so I decided to surf the web." He widened his eyes. Damn it, it was like he got dazzling lessons from his brother. "Please, please, Danny, forgive me?"
God. I'm such a softy when it comes to Emmett. I grinned, giving into his adorable apology. "Okay, Em." He matched my smile.
In just one stride, he was in front of me, enveloping me in a giant bear hug. I could barely breathe, and he felt hard as a rock, but I laughed all the same. Even though I was sure that the smallest amount of pressure applied could crush my bones, I wasn't unfamiliar with giant hugs from guys. I liked them, actually. But we were soon parted by Edward, obviously sure that Emmett was killing me.
"If I broke your computer, I would not be as easily forgiven as Emmett," Edward complained.
"What can I say? You aren't as lovable as him. Besides, he gives stellar hugs." Emmett laughed.
"I win!" He was still laughing as we backed down the steps.
"Great. Now he's going to have a huge head all day," Edward scolded.
"Hey, you still have your dazzling powers and all. He has to be fun, or else you would win every time." I pulled a shirt out of my closet, my favorite low-cut tank. I did the whole changing my shirt without getting completely naked.
"Hey, I'll leave so you can get changed in peace," Edward offered.
"Nah, it's cool. Don't leave." I slipped off my pants, revealing my boy shorts underwear. I'd never really been… shy around guys. I'd often changed in front of Adam, Dylan, and James. It's not like they were seeing anything more than what they'd see if I was wearing a bathing suit. They never showed and sign of caring, so I figured it wouldn't matter if I did the same with Edward. We were just friends … that happened to kiss…
"I should probably go," Edward croaked, staring at my bit of cleavage, which almost made me laugh out loud.
"No, I'm all done anyway." I led him out, shutting the door behind us.
"I have a question for you," Edward asked, following me.
"Shoot."
"Why do you get in the shower in the middle of the night?"
I blushed. I never thought about Edward hearing me. "I don't really know. Nighttime is usually the only time that I am guaranteed people are home, and I've seen the movie Psycho. Now it's just a habit I have."
"You're not alone now," he pointed out. "No one will try and hack you to pieces in your shower while Emmett and I are here. I mean, I very nearly crushed your own father this morning."
"Thanks for the reassurance, but I think I'll stick to my routine. Old habits and all that, y'know?" Not that I wouldn't mind your company in the shower, or anything. "Shit, I forgot my book." I ran back up the stairs, with Edward right behind me. I grabbed Eclipse off my bureau.
"Another one of my books?" He raised an eyebrow.
"It's not your book, it's Stephenie Meyer's book," I corrected. "And besides, it's not my fault that sometimes car rides with Dyl, Ad, and James get little, er, crowded. I need something to keep my sanity."
"But you have the real thing right here," he protested, taking a step back and fanning his arms out so I could see said real thing.
"Which is great, because now I can actually picture you in the scenes." I flipped open to the line after Bella insists she doesn't like the big bed, when Edward says, 'This would be difficult on a couch.' My heart swooned. Oh, this should be fun. I tilted the book so he couldn't read.
"Danny," he groaned. "What's in that book?"
"Nothing," I said innocently. "No sex, at least."
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Excellent. Can we please go downstairs so we can see what else Emmett has broken?"
"Wait." I smoothed the blanket down on my bed and took a seat, scrunching my knees to my chest. I was going to address certain… emotions that had come up since Edward's arrival, because it just needed to be said. I took in a deep breath. "Edward, what's going to happen?"
He blinked. "What?"
"With you here, and everything. Are you ever going to go… home?" The last part was whispered. My gaze determinedly avoided his, purely for the reason that I felt really stupid. The emotional side of me was dreading his departure.
"I'm not ready to leave you just yet, Dan. Give me a little more time." Gently, he stroked my cheek.
"Edward, we can't do this!" I shouted, pulling away from his touch. "You have to go home at some point. We can't just kiss each other and then you pack up and leave. It just doesn't work that way!"
"Danny," he said, getting up and placing himself in front of me. "Can't you see that you've changed me? The Edward Cullen in Twilight… he doesn't exist. Not until now, when I've come here. I can't… go back. I don't want to go back to that."
Tears were streaming down my face. "You can't just go forever without your family, Edward. It can't work like this. I don't even know what you want, or even what I want." No, I thought bitterly. I just can't let someone who makes me feel this strong in. Not without a fight, at least. Now fully crying, the next words came out as choked sobs. "And every time you say my name, it sounds like you should be saying Bella's name!"
"Shh, Danny," he whispered against the crown of my head as he held me close to him. "Calm down. Everything will be alright." I tried to struggle against him, unable to believe his soothing word, but he never loosened his grip. Finally, I broke down, crying harder than ever.
"How can you say that?" I moaned softly. "We have no way knowing what the future holds. I can't stand anymore empty promises."
"I don't know what's going to happen." He tilted my head up by my chin so I was forced again to look into his painfully beautiful eyes. "But you have to promise to stop worrying about it."
I nodded my head, while his hands were still holding it. For the second time, he reached his mouth to mine. My heart stopped, I would swear to God that it literally stopped beating for the short second that our mouths were connected. Slowly, tentatively, I wrapped my arms around his neck after the kiss was even over. My head rested on his chest, and I didn't think that, for a moment, I was vulnerable and could be crushed at my moment. In that perfect minute, it didn't matter.
He unwrapped my arms and reluctantly let me go. I threw a sweatshirt in a bag for the night as a loud bang emerged from the doorway. The door swung open.
"Make yourselves decent!" Emmett shouted, one large hand covering his face.
"Em, we're on opposite sides of the room," I said. "You can look."
He dropped his hand and grinned. "I didn't think you were doing anything. That's just how I enter a room when a guy and a girl are in it alone."
"It's true," Edward nodded solemnly. "He and Jasper do it all the time to me and Alice for laughs."
"Right." I picked up my bag and threw Eclipse in it as well. "The guys will be here any minute. Let's go downstairs."
"I was just coming to get you," Emmett claimed, but we ignored him.
Edward opened the door to reveal Adam's black, beat-up but still impressive Lincoln Navigator. "Whoa, great timing," I muttered.
Edward laughed and led me and Emmett out the door. "Isn't it though?"