Disclaimer: I don't own any part of the Twilight universe but you guys already knew that.
Hi all! Let me start by apologizing for the delay. Long story short, my blind dog Bunker (you guys know him as Bella's pup Buddy) took a turn for the worst about two weeks ago. Most of the family free time has been spent attending to him. Unfortunately, he didn't recover and we had to put him to sleep. I was absolutely devastated and just simply couldn't focus on writing for a couple of days. I am very sorry to keep you guys waiting but I know you'll all understand.
Happy Black Friday to all the US groupies (hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving) and happy TGIF to everyone.
I think a couple of you guys have been waiting for this chapter. Can't wait to see what you guys think of it. See you at the bottom.
Playlist:
What You Want-Evanescence
Chapter 7- What You Want
EPOV
Four days later, I found myself smack dab…holy shit, I had already picked up JP's insane diction…I found myself sitting in the middle of the most bizarrely domesticated scene I could imagine. I was very casually seated at one of the eight chairs that surrounded a glass top table that sat outside the main house under a covered porch, reading a newspaper at seven forty-five am. To my right was Heidi, looking very sleepy but very content as she picked at a bowl of fresh fruit in front of her. To my left, was Dimitri's wife Chelsea, who was now visibly pregnant, complete with a bellybutton that had popped out the same day she arrived. Chip and Alice were immediately across from me, flipping through one of the seemingly thousands of photo albums that we lugged…jeez, I really needed to watch my speech…that we hauled with us to every single new home we had moved into. Jasper rounded out our table, looking more relaxed than I would have imagined possible and also thumbing through the newspaper.
Behind me and inside the open doors of the overly large family room inside the main house, my mother, Rosalie and Emmett were serving breakfast to the kids. All eight of them; who were, simultaneously laughing, shouting, eating, snorting and attacking each other. It was utter pandemonium in the great room behind me and every single person that was gathered to witness it was nauseatingly happy to be a part of the scene. Paul, in particular, seemed to take great pleasure in stirring up the younger kids and they seemed only too happy to rough-house before the sun had fully come up.
The air inside and out was filled with the smell of bacon and eggs, pancakes that my mother was cooking to order, some in the shape of animals and some in the shape of letters. The few that managed to make it off the griddle in their traditional round shape quickly found themselves flying through the air as doughy Frisbees. The pungent scent of oranges and apples in concentrated bursts, as well as coffee from the steaming cups of the adults that were sitting with me rounded out the cacophony of aromas that beckoned in the sunrise.
"Esme? You need any help?" Chip called as the fourth crash of the morning sounded, followed closely by a small giggle. If I was correct, that particular giggle came from Jane and Felix's middle son Alastair.
"No thanks, we're all good," a very amused shout came from the vicinity of the kitchen that until our guest's arrival had never been used.
Small chuckles came from around the table. I folded one side of the paper in my hand and looked at the smiling faces that surrounded me.
When the remaining members of EverClear had arrived two days ago, shortly before a virtual truckload of human food also arrived, the same touching reunion scene had played out once again. There were hugs and squeals as my wife's former band mates all took as much pleasure from seeing her again as she took from seeing them. There were introductions to all the children…and honestly, everywhere you looked, there was a little person… and tons of luggage that we all pitched in to move to the varying cottages that would play home to everyone for the duration of their stay.
"Is it always like this?" I asked no one in particular.
"Yes."
"Yep."
"Uh huh."
All three of the humans at our table answered in the affirmative and then howled with laughter.
"I don't think we even notice the noise when they are all together anymore. It's just a part of life when you travel with eight kids under the age of thirteen," Heidi said with a reassuring touch on my forearm. "As long as no one is bleeding or dying, we generally just tune them out. And let's face it, they are all quieter than their respective parents are," she finished with a snort.
"It took a long time to get used to," Chelsea chimed in, her skin glowing with the pregnancy hormones that raced through her body. I hadn't told her but I could actually hear very small amounts of the baby's thoughts when she was close to me. There was nothing distinct to hear, mainly emotions that were somehow verbalized. It was an extraordinary thing to be conscious of and I had taken great pleasure in "listening" to the baby over the last two days. "But once you realized how happy the kids are, it gets easier."
"I will say it's nice to have some help with them," Heidi conceded as she twisted in her chair and looked back into the room again.
I followed her gaze. Seated at opposite ends of the couch were the oldest two kids, Paul and Isa. They were largely ignoring the surrounding chaos by immersing themselves in an iPod sort of device for him and a large leather bound book for her. Every so often, Paul would reach out and smack Isa's leg or she would kick him with her foot without either of them every moving their gazed from their plates and entertainment. Aside from the grunts and "ow"s that followed, they hardly seemed to be aware of what they were doing. I chuckled at the memory of their dad and my wife doing the exact same thing to each other a very long time ago on a tour bus and wondered if the behavior was genetic or learned.
The large coffee table in front of the couch had five little ones seated around it, each of them eating huge amounts of food for their tiny bodies. And settled quite comfortably in the middle of them was Rosalie, a four year old on her lap and peanut butter smeared on her cheek in the shape of a miniature kiss. I had honestly, in all the years I had known her, never seen her look happier or more at peace.
I studied my sister a little harder as the toddler in her lap tried for the nineteenth time to feed her a bite of his breakfast. Instead of the cold and often harsh tone of voice that was most commonly present with Rose, her voice was gentle and loving as she told him he needed to eat the vile food himself so he could grow up to be big and strong. Emmett stood a few feet behind her, watching the exchange with a smile I didn't think I had ever seen him wear. He was in awe of his wife as she deftly handled the barrage of children that surrounded her.
I had always known that Rosalie wanted to have a child in her human life and that the loss of that possibility was what she struggled with the hardest in her immortal one. But I didn't think I, or anyone in our family for that matter, had ever truly understood just how deep rooted that longing was. It wasn't that she wanted a child because that's what was expected at that time of her life. It was that she truly and deeply loved to be around the kinder, more honest and open minds of kids. For all the bitterness that she harbored and often lashed out at her family with, I understood as I watched her eyes simply shine with adoration at the little boy in her lap, that it came from a place of pain and loss over the infant she would never carry.
"They really are beautiful," I said as I watched my mother bring yet another plate of some type of fried meat to the table. Where she had learned to cook all this shit was beyond me but it was a talent that was more than useful at the moment. As she placed slices of the nasty leathery-looking substance on the plates around the table, she had the same sparkle to her eyes as my sister. When she reached around Rose to serve her lap adornment, Esme kissed her eldest daughter on the forehead. This was something that the two of them shared and were both taking extreme joy in experiencing together.
"Do you mean the kids or your mother and sister," Carlisle said as he sat down quietly in the remaining chair at our table. I hadn't even realized he had joined us until he spoke.
"Both, I think," I said with a wide smile as I nodded "good morning" to my father.
He cut his eyes into the large room behind me and then looked at me grinning like mad.
"I would have to agree on both counts."
"Edward? I have got to ask you where the hell this picture came from," Chip said with a look of mild disgust on his face. I couldn't help but laugh as I saw the photo in question in his mind. "Or more to the point, what the hell it's supposed to be."
I stood from my chair and passed the newspaper in my hand to Carlisle. I walked around to stand directly behind Chip and Alice and looked at the page of the photo album that they held between them. I noticed, for the first time, that Buddy had curled himself around the bottom of Chip's chair. Chip's bare feet were slowly swinging back and forth over the soft coat of the dog at his feet as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Buddy had, almost instantly, become every bit as attached to Chip as he had my wife. He followed Chip constantly and took every opportunity to cuddle up to him.
The pages of the album were open to show eight photos, all of which had been taken about seven years ago. There was one of my sisters and wife dressed in ski gear holding their poles and posing in front of a ski lift at a resort in Switzerland we had visited often. Another showed my brothers and me dressed in ridiculous outfits and standing in a mass of people at the start point for the running of the bulls in Spain. Another showed my wife and me standing atop a waterfall on Esme's Island preparing to cliff dive, both of us sparkling and smiling in the sunlight. There was also one of the entire family that particular year on Halloween. We were all dressed as superheroes and standing in the lobby of the hospital in upstate New York that my father had been working in. And then there was the picture in question.
"That," Alice said with a laugh of her own, "is by far the nastiest story in Cullen lore. Honestly, it took me weeks to get over that little escapade."
"You have to be looking at the Star Wars picture," Carlisle said with a grin on his face as he folded the paper back.
"Of course it is," I said with a louder laugh as I glanced over toward Jasper, who looked somewhat embarrassed. I opened my mouth to tell the tale but was distracted by Jared as he waddled out onto the patio, his pajama covered feet squeaking against the concrete.
Without a word, he walked to Heidi's side and reached up onto the table. His fingers wrapped around the handle to a sharp knife that she had been using to slice her grapefruit with earlier. He clumsily tried to turn with the edge facing away from him.
"What are you doing little man?" his mother asked him in a much more casual tone of voice than I would have been capable of given the circumstances. Her hand on his stomach stopped his progress back toward the family room.
"Paul stolled my pastwy," he said with a shrug, his face completely devoid of any guilt. Apparently, he thought a knife was the perfect retribution for his older brother's theft.
"Well, pastry or not, give that to Mommy," Heidi replied while wiggling the handle of the knife away from him. I had almost relaxed when she set the knife back down on the table. But immediately, she picked up a spoon and gave it to him. "Use this instead."
He smiled gloriously at her before he took of at a kid's speed sprint toward his vengeance. Every one of the vampires at the table absolutely howled with laughter at the exchange. It took only seconds for the yell to carry to our table as Jared attacked.
"Ow! Fudge! You lil a-hole," Paul squealed as his brother carried out his plan.
"Paul," Isa sang happily from her end of the couch. "You're already up to two dollars and you haven't even finished eating, you moron."
"Aww, Isa! The little crapper stabbed me with a spoon. Surely I get one freebie for that!"
I looked to Heidi questioningly at the exchange.
"Every time Paul curses, or his version of curses, Isa charges him a quarter. The "F" words earn double," she finished with a smile.
"So by this point, she has already paid for her college tuition based solely off her brother's inability to control his mouth," Chip finished with a snort. "But back to this picture. Please explain because it's just nasty looking."
"You should have smelled it," Alice said wrinkling her nose.
"It wasn't that bad, Darlin'" Jasper said with a huff. He was slightly embarrassed and not handling that emotion very well, which made it even funnier for the rest of us.
"Bella and my dear husband are both closet Star Wars junkies," Alice started, the memory of that bizarre afternoon played through her thoughts.
"All of us have, at one time or another, gotten random texts from the two of them that turned out to be one-liners from the movies," I supplied, unable to keep from laughing.
"The geek squad has even gone to those god forsaken Star Wars conventions together. They feed each other's disturbing addiction to the sci-fi atrocities like crack addicts," Rosalie added from inside the house, her typical scowl firmly in place. She, above all of us, thought their interest in the movies was juvenile at best and repulsive at worst.
"So my dear children decided to recreate their favorite scene from one of the movies," my father supplied with a chuckle of his own. "They had Emmett take the picture so that they could enter it into a scene contest at one of the events they went to several years ago."
"Okay, I'm completely lost. What does Star Wars have to do with Jasper wearing quite possibly the ugliest blue parka in recorded history and Bells lying inside an animal carcass? That's just…disgusting!" Chip nearly shouted. By this point in the conversation, every single human sitting around the table was laughing so hard their eyes were watering and the vampires were scaring off the nearest wildlife with their own laughter.
Jasper was doubled over he was laughing so hard and poor Chelsea, who was completely new to his gift, was nearly wetting herself she was cackling so hard. It took almost ten full minutes for the sounds of our combined laughter to fade and for my brother to get control of himself enough to quit influencing the rest of us.
"I always knew Bella was screwed up in the best possible way but I had no idea that Cowboy here was equally as messed up," Chip said with a smirk in Jaz's direction. If it had been possible for him to blush, I was positive that he would have in that moment.
"Speaking…speaking of Bella, any idea where they are?" Chelsea asked with her continued laughter making it difficult to understand her.
"The studio," chorused from around the table as I, along with Alice, Chip and Heidi, responded at the same moment.
Our relaxing morning and early breakfast was the direct result of the EverClear parents, and my wife, disappearing sometime in the early morning hours. After what should henceforth be deemed an Olympic event known as getting eight kids under the age of thirteen to bed, we had all gathered in the family room around a blazing fire. The conversation had begun as a round of "catch up on everyone's lives". There were stories of tours, births, marriages…you named it and it was probably discussed. My family were all very much participants in the conversations, relishing in relaying our own adventures over the last two decades. It was the stories of out lives that had lead Chip to thumb his way through the mountains of photo albums that were strewn around the patio.
Around two a.m., when Chelsea and Heidi began yawning, the conversation had somehow turned to…the ridiculous. Bella, JP and Emmett were very aggressively arguing which animated character would be the best one to create a clone of…no, I couldn't believe it either…when JP noticed that when she wasn't vehemently arguing in favor of replicating Batman, that her fingers were twitching in her lap. Less than five minutes after his observation, the musicians had all disappeared. The last any of us had seen of them, they were literally racing each other down the path toward the studio in one of the three golf carts that had arrived two days ago. Immediately upon their arrival, my brothers, JP and I took them out for a "spin" that quickly turned into an all out war of bumper golf carts. The last sight any of us had was of the large dent in the rear fender of the cart that was the perfect shape of Emmett's head.
"Do they always disappear like this?" Chelsea asked, pulling me from my memories of the previous night. I realized, as I looked over at her, that I was smiling like a fool as I remembered my wife's squeal as she rode away.
"Well, not always. But the five of them haven't had this much time together in a very long time," Heidi conceded. "It doesn't really shock me that they took off. I promise they won't be like this the entire time we're here," she finished with a gentle pat to Chelsea's hand.
"Oh, I don't mind. Dimitri has been so relaxed since we arrived. I just wondered if it was common."
"Back in the day," Chip said, a memory of a dingy apartment and a booming thunderstorm outside its window, "they did most of their writing at night. Bella was an insomniac," he said as he cut his eyes toward me, "and JP was simply insane. It used to drive the other tenants crazy."
I looked toward Heidi, who had opened her mouth to add to the conversation, but I was distracted with a small but sharp intake of breath coming from my sister. I looked up into the glassy eyes I knew so well as her vision flashed inside my own head. What I saw drew a gasp of my own.
"Quick!" Alice nearly yelled. "Take Heidi and run like hell to the studio, Edward. When you get there, don't stop until you press the 'record' button on the board. We'll be right behind you. Go!"
Without a single question, Heidi rose and followed me into the garden behind the house. As gently as I could, I pulled her onto my back and took off at a dead sprint toward the rear of the property. It had been a very long time since I'd had a human woman on my back. As the warmth of her body and the softness of her skin pressed against me as the trees flew by at a blur, I let my mind wander back to a long ago time when it was my Bella clutching my neck. I couldn't help but smile as the memories flooded me.
"What exactly are we running toward," Heidi screamed in my ear, her voice tinged with both amusement and fear.
"Not exactly sure," I shouted back loud enough for her to hear above the wind as it rushed past us. "But we learned a very long time ago not to question Alice."
"So for all we know, they could be growing third heads and speaking 'Monkey' when we get there?"
I couldn't help but laugh. Apparently, Heidi had spent far too much time in JP's company.
"Well, I think given the fact that she told me to press the record button we are most likely safe from them speaking like animals," I replied as the cottage that housed the studio came into view.
I tore through the door without bothering to close it behind us and without putting Heidi down, ran to the enormous mixing board in the outer room of the cottage. The lights in the sound proof room at the back of the room were all on, leaving the front room in complete darkness and the two of us invisible to the five people inside.
With more force than was prudent given the equipment's fragile make, I slammed my hand down on the large button that brought the mixer in front of me to life. It was then that I looked into the glass and took in the sight before me, just as the first beats of the drum filled the quiet air.
They were all standing in painfully familiar places around the room. Felix was seated behind the drum kit with Jane to his right behind an electronic synthesizer. JP and Dimitri both had guitars hanging around their necks. And standing behind a mic stand beside the large piano was my wife.
Do what you what you want
If you have a dream for better
Do what you what you want
If you don't want it anymore
"Oh my God!" Heidi squealed from beside me as we watched the unbelievable sight before us.
As the heavy guitars joined the mix, JP walked directly up to stand in front of Bella. Between his strokes, he reached up and pulled the tie from her hair so that the ponytail she wore gave way and her hair fell in waves around her shoulders and back. As the same time, Dimitri pulled at the material of her tee shirt, untucking it.
She smiled gloriously at them, took a deep breath and then began to sing again.
Do what you what you want
You're world's closing in on you now
Stand and face the unknown
The last note was raw and powerful. And recalled a voice I'd listened to incessantly to more than twenty years ago on an extremely out of date iPod. As she dropped rather ungracefully onto the piano bench and brought her fingers to the key, the space around me filled up as Alice, Chip, Jasper, Chelsea and Carlisle joined us. JP was slinging himself around the room like some mad conductor as he directed the band on the timing of what was unmistakably a new song.
Every heart in my hands
Like a pale reflection
Hello, hello
Remember me?
I'm everything you can't control
Somewhere beyond the pain
There must be a way
To believe we can break through
"Dirtier, Bitch!" JP yelled, grinning from ear to ear as he tried to pull more power from her voice. "Gimme more."
As I looked to my wife as she played, I was nearly overcome with pride and love. She was absolutely shining with happiness. Her music was always a release and a joy for her. But playing with the four people in the room with her? She was glowing with happiness. Her eyes were blazing and her body was moving to the rhythm with seemingly no thought.
They continued through the next verse, gathering momentum and volume with each note. It was fucking magical to witness. The five of them all seemed to read each other's minds with chord changes and movements. Even more astounding was that the minds of every one of them were devoid of any thought other than the music they were creating. There was no stress or worries about trivial day to day things. They were all completely consumed with the song.
There's still time
Close your eyes
Only love will guide you home
Tear down the walls
And free your soul
As she hammered the last note, her head tilted to the right. As the note faded, the music changed tempo and JP, Dimitri and Felix all thrashed their heads around in circles. Her smile would have brought me to my knees if I hadn't been so practiced at controlling my reactions to my wife.
"Come on, make Eddie blow his load," JP barked as the song took another turn and her voice dropped into the lower register than made me insane with lust. As the sensual tone rang through the air, I tried to cover my inevitable reaction with little success.
JP spun in a circle in the middle of the room, his finger pressed to his lips in another signal to the band. Immediately, they all ceased playing and my wife's clear innocent voice whispered the next lines.
Hello, hello it's only me
Infecting everything you love
Somewhere beyond the pain
There must be a way to believe
They finished the song in a blaze of screaming guitars, the thrash of the drums and my wife's perfect voice. As the last note faded, they all yelled and threw their hands into the air in celebration. They flew into each other's arms and hugged, jumping up and down like children. The people that surrounded me did the same. Squeals and laughter and exclamations of shock filled the air. But my eyes were locked on hers.
Through the chaos of celebration with her band, Bella looked into the glass that separated the recording room with the outer room. Whether she could actually see me or not, she looked directly at me and mouthed "I love you" silently. I couldn't remember the last time I had seen her look so complete.
I had been wrong when I had thought the reunion was completed by the arrival of the rest of the band. It was then, in that moment, that everything was right in her universe. With the energy of the new song still hanging in the air around us, EverClear was finally and truly reunited.
Chapter Notes: We are on schedule for the weekly updates to continue now. Again, I am sorry I kept you guys waiting so long. Leave me some love and see ya soon.