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LadySharkey1 rocks my world by being the most amazing, kick-ass beta I could ever imagine.

Chapter 20

And now he shows up drunk. Fuck my life.

As I looked at the pitiful pile of human being holding onto the doorframe, emanating a smell of booze so pungent I could almost get drunk just from sniffing him, two thoughts battled for dominance in my mind.

The first being: what the fuck?

The second: now what?

Part of me felt a little sorry for the shadow of a man, leaning awkwardly against the doorframe but most of my was just too angry, disappointed and suspicious of his motives to give a shit. For heavens sake, your kid – our kid – is sleeping upstairs!

"What are you doing here?" These words seemed appropriate enough, especially considering all the other things I really wanted to say to him.

He swayed, his eyes crossing and uncrossing as he tried to find his bearings again. "I w-wanted to talk to you, Bella…my Bella."

My Bella? Again: what the fuck? "I'd say you've plenty of opportunities to do so which didn't involve you showing up at my place drunk as a skunk and in the middle of the freakin' night!"

He sighed, his body almost collapsing as he stumbled against the door frame, his head looked almost too heavy for the muscles of his neck to keep up as he gave me his best rendition of a drunk puppy dog look. "Please?"

I wasn't particularly interested to hear whatever the fuck he had to say at that time of night…or morning, really; not that I had any illusions in that direction. If drunk Edward wanted to talk, he was bloody well going to, no matter how hard I'd try to stop him.

Sighing as I did the math in my head—add drunk Edward to middle of the night, plus only coming up with some sort of screaming match that would equal waking up Charlie and half the neighborhood, didn't sound like a good equation. However, I stepped aside to let him pass. "You're not coming up," I warned him. "I'll allow you into the bakery for a cup of strong, black coffee while you wait for your folks to come pick you up but nothing more."

"My parents?" He looked up, his eyes glassy from the effects of alcohol but still startlingly green in their watery appearance. "Why?"

"Because you're in no state to drive home," I spanned back, "and, believe it or not, you have a lot of people who care about what happens to you. I don't want to have to be the one that tells Charlie her dad crashed his stupid, drunk ass against a tree and cause her even more pain!"

He nodded, as if seeing the sense in sitting around and waiting for someone to pick him up, only now started to register in his brain. "Okay, but I walked here."

"You did?" I asked. Well, at least that's something.

"Yep."

"Alrighty then, so do you want coffee or tea?" I asked, hoping either one of those options would sober him up a little.

"Coffee," he muttered, the stench of stale alcohol almost making me sick as he trudged past me. "Why does it always start with coffee?"

"What?" I asked, not really wanting to know but too curious not to ask at the same time.

"Whenever something happens in my life that truly fucks me up, it always starts with coffee," he clarified. "It happened the night you broke up with me…you brought me coffee right before you told me that we needed to talk." Running his hand through his hair he shook his head as I took a shallow breath, the room suddenly spinning like I was drunk.

"Then dad took me to Seattle to have coffee with the Dean and work me over into accepting a spot in their medical program." He chuckled darkly. "I don't need to tell you how that fucked everything up even further between you, me and Charlie. And then this thing with Angela started with coffee too…I'm so sick of fucking coffee!"

"So, tea then?" I sighed, not really knowing what to do. Part of me was still pissed off about the fact that he'd come here inebriated, especially after all the shit that had gone down between the two of us. The other part, though…

It was weird. There was this piece of me that still hurt, seeing Edward so lost and confused. But I had to admit that another part of me kind of took a wicked satisfaction in the fact that I was the stronger one.

If there is one thing that I'm sure of, it's that all is not well in Edwardland.

As I waited for the kettle to boil, I kept my back to him; both to keep my anger from boiling as hot as the water and to keep myself from feeling too sorry for him. He had made his bed, after all…

"Charlie told me she really enjoyed talking to you," I tried as the prolonged silence started to get more oppressive by the second. It wasn't a true statement, per se, since Charlie hadn't really talked all that much about what had happened. However, from what Esme told me, and from what I'd surmised from the snippets my little scatterbrained kid did feed me, it had gone well.

"I'm glad she trusted me enough to open up," Edward's broken voice sounded behind me, making the urge I felt to turn around and see the face belonging to that voice all the greater. "Even if what she said…it killed me, Bella."

With the water boiling, I couldn't avoid eye-contact any longer, my first glance wary as I juggled the teapot, two mugs and a plate of leftover cookies from Charlie's last baking experiment. "She finally managed to get through to you, didn't she?" I snorted bitterly, wondering how he could be so stupid to only get it now, when all the facts had been shoved into his face time and time again.

He let out a long sigh. "I know."

"You know?" I felt the urge to splash that hot, boiling tea water right into his face. Stupid prick! "That's it? After you pretty much accused me of jealousy and everything else, chose her side against our daughter's, and stood by as your girlfriend tried to paint me out to be a bad mother?"

"She…" Another sigh as he shrugged, his eyes glassy, though maybe not from the alcohol as his lips pursed into a wobbly slit before opening. "There's no excuse, I know. I've been an ass…and a fucking tool, but what she told me always seemed so logical. Well, until Charlie told me her side of things."

"So…what? She was the Grimma Wormtongue to your King Theoden?" I cried, knowing he would get the Lord of the Rings gaffe. He'd better, since I remember lying through my teeth to mom and dad so that I could join him for the midnight showing of The Fellowship. "You cannot be sitting there, telling me you are not to blame for the shit that went down between us!"

"No…I don't mean…," he started to backtrack.

"You don't?" I huffed. "It sure as hell sounded like it!"

"Will you let me speak?" He snapped exasperatedly, his eyes ablaze as his hands dug into the messy expanse of bronze hair, making it even more riotous than it usually looked. "What I'm trying to say…fuck, what happened is that I wanted to believe her, okay? I wanted to believe I could actually find a woman that would get you out of my head, and Angela…she was everything you weren't but I still liked her and she was just…there, I suppose, until I couldn't even remember a time when she wasn't."

"Oh." My response was quite illiterate and stupid, but it was all I could manage. My head was spinning as I tried to get to grips with everything I'd just heard.

He still loved me, or at least he had loved me until Voldemary came around.

Wow.

"I liked her," he slurred on, his hands folded around his cup of tea like it was a lifeline. "I mean…she wasn't you but that was okay. It would have hurt too much if she were and…and after a while I really started to feel that I could do this…I could fall in love with her someday and forget you. Finally move on from you…"

He sighed, my heart breaking in spite of all the anger and shock I felt as I saw this pathetic, drunk figure slumped at the table in the middle of my safe haven. "She made me feel sure of myself again; a man…so when the opportunity to come back home came up, I really thought I could do this with her. I thought I could bring her home with me and that everything could be good… but it wasn't, was it?"

Feeling the sobs rise in my chest, I had to settle for shaking my head.

No, it had never been good.

It had been terrible.

Awful.

Too much for one person to bear.

But still, all these months I'd thought I was the only one. Realizing that he had, in part at least, been feeling the same? I honestly didn't know what to think about that. My head and my emotions…they were a mess.

"I tried so fucking hard to make it work." He droned on, his voice still dragging. "I wanted to do right by Angela and I really cared for her but you—" he paused, "I knew I'd already lost you years earlier, but it still hurt to see you when I still had this dream, you know? All I could think about was that if I just tried so fucking hard to love her like she wanted me to; it would be okay in the end…I could be happy. I mean, she wanted to make me happy so if I let her, she would succeed, right?"

I nodded wryly. As messed up and jumbled as his words were, I could still see what he was trying to say. And, to some extent, I knew how he had been feeling. I mean, hadn't I been in exactly the same boat with Liam? Hadn't I been trying to just push through the heartbreak and all of the warning bells because I knew that what I truly wanted was out of reach?

"I tried so fucking hard to love her…" he repeated himself, his hands barely supporting his head as he slumped over the table. "I wanted it to be real so much that I didn't see what she was really like…that she wanted to be the picture of a happy family, and not really with the people in it."

I smirked bitterly. That's a good way to describe her. Too bad it took you long enough to see it!

"I'm so sorry," he muttered. "For being blind, and mostly for not listening to you…and to myself, really. It was only when Charlie told me the truth that I realized…"

"What?" I chimed in when his voice fell silent again. "You were an idiot for all but ruining your relationship with your daughter and for risking everything we've worked so hard to give her."

"She's…out of my life now." He nodded, as if to convince himself of the fact while my heart did a little summersault of relief. "After Charlie opened my eyes I finally saw what she's been doing and…and I hate that I ever even brought her here."

"Took you long enough," I muttered.

He nodded, his eyes not meeting mine. I didn't need eye contact, though, to know exactly what they would have looked like.

Hurt.

Remorseful.

Broken.

I'd seen it before but, at that time, I had put the blame for that look solely on my own shoulders. This time, though…it was him. All the way.

Not that it made me feel any better about myself.

As far as I was concerned, with the way things were, we'd both ended up as losers in this game. All that was needed to be done was to the make sure Charlie didn't suffer the same kind of defeat.

With a look on the clock I let out a deep breath, grabbing my own empty teacup and his from the table as I tried to avoid looking at him, knowing that looking would mean feeling. "Look, it's late and you're still drunk. So how about I call your dad so he can drive you back to your place to sleep all of this off, and to make sure Charlie wakes up none the wiser in the morning."

"I don't want to go back to my place," he muttered. "Angela…when I broke up with her she didn't really take it well and my place is kind of trashed right now. And do you really have to get my dad involved in this?"

Right.

Of course.

That was the only thing missing from this picture: the angry bitch of a—now, mercifully—ex-girlfriend throwing shit at his head for doing the only wise thing and kicking her to the curb. Not that I couldn't understand the inclination to actually throw stuff at him. I mean, if I wouldn't have been so bothered about the mess half the contents of my cabinets would have gone the same route.

"I'll ask him to take you to their place then," I breathed, rolling my eyes at his stupidity. "At this point, I don't think you could have made more of an ass of yourself in their eyes anyway so having to pick their grown ass son up in the middle of the night like some obnoxious teenager kind of fits into the picture. Hell, while we're at it, how about we give my dad a call? I bet it's been some time since he's dealt with a 'drunk and disorderly' to break the monotony of all those speeding tickets and you and I both know he'd have no fucking problem throwing your ass in jail."

"I don't want to go to jail," he mumbled, half asleep from the sound of it.

I wasted no time calling his parents, the prospect of having Charlie come down in the morning to see her dad sleeping off his intoxication was a strong enough incentive to even make me consider dragging his drunk, sleeping ass all the way to their side of town if they didn't pick up.

Fortunately for me, though, they did, and if the look on his father's face when he came to pick him up was anything to go by, Edward didn't have to count on any sympathy from his parents by the time he's sobered up.

Just what he deserves for not trusting me.

I barely managed to keep back a smug little smile as I helped Carlisle close the door on his son as he was snoring up a storm on the backseat. Besides, I got to see Dr. Carlisle Cullen in his pajama's, looking all disheveled, which is definitely going to help make him less daunting the next time he tries to go all snooty on me.

"Mom?"

Just when I thought I'd put out the fire, another little spark flared up again as I climbed the stairs towards my apartment to find my daughter waiting for me in the hallway, rubbing her sleepy eyes.

"Charlie? Why are you out of bed, honey?" I tried, hoping she would just be thirsty or in need of a bathroom visit.

"Why was Grandpa Cullen helping dad get in the car?" she wondered sleepily, her eyes growing more alert as she visibly thought things over. "And why were they here?"

Thinking on my feet I blurted out the first lie I could string together, hoping she would go for it. I hated lying to her, and rarely had to. "Well…daddy came to say goodnight to you and try to make sure you weren't sad after your meeting tonight but you were already in bed, so he and I talked and he fell asleep so I had to call Grandpa to come pick him up."

I saw her ponder my words for a couple of seconds until she accepted it, which meant that either my lie made sense or she was just too tired to bother. After that, I managed to get her back to bed with no real trouble before I threw myself down on my own mattress even though I already knew sleep would be the furthest thing from happening.

After all, how does someone sleep when the world around her seems to be caving in on itself at regular intervals?

Thoughts?