The Long Way Home by TheHeartOfLife.pdf

The Long Way Home by TheHeartOfLife

A Twilight Fan Fiction Story Based on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series

Rated M for Mature.

Summary: There was a girl. She loved a boy. And then she lost it all. Will her journey back to the place

where it all began and ended light the path for forgiveness, or will it swallow her whole? A story about

friendship, love and the true meaning of coming home.

Prologue

They faced off on the playground, the diminutive little boy and the girl whose hair shone like liquid

gold underneath the sun.

She appraised him with cool blue eyes, her gaze finally stopping at the top of his head. She sniffed

and said, "Your head looks like it's on fire."

His hand flew to his hair and he flattened his palms over it, trying hard to hide it from her.

"You're stupid!" he shouted, his voice infused with all the passion that his five-year-old heart could

muster. He watched in fascination as the girl's nostrils flared and her eyes grew large. She looked a

little bit like a monster he had read about in one of his new books last night.

" You're stupid!" she bellowed. "And you have cooties!"

"I do not!"

"Do too!"

"Edward, Rosalie, please use your inside voices," Mrs. Cross called from the swings.

"But we're outside ," Rosalie responded loudly, hands on hips.

Edward secretly agreed, but she'd just accused him of having cooties so he smiled widely as Mrs.

Cross marched over and ushered the girl inside, ending her recess early. She glared back at him the

whole way.

After school, Edward shuffled out the front doors with the other students to meet his mom. He didn't

see the extended foot of an older boy until he had already tripped over it. His palms stung painfully as

they hit the sidewalk, his backpack flying up and hitting him square on the back of the head. His eyes

stung, too, and he blinked profusely. He hauled himself up, dusting off his dirty hands on his

Spiderman t-shirt. A hot, fat tear rolled down his cheek and he angrily wiped it away.

The older boy was laughing at him, pointing his finger and clutching his stomach. Edward furrowed his

brow fiercely, trying to stave off the ensuing tears but they just kept coming. He re-adjusted his

backpack and started to walk away, his breath coming out in little gasps.

It was the sound that stopped him, a metallic clank followed by a pained howl. He looked back over

his shoulder and saw Rosalie, Care Bears lunch box in hand, glaring at the older boy. He was clutching

his head, staring down at her like she was crazy. Edward thought she might be.

"Pick on someone your own size, stupid!" Rosalie shouted. She turned to Edward. This time she didn't

glare at him. She didn't look so much like a monster anymore. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," he whispered, watching the boy slink away, still rubbing his head.

"Well, you need to stick up for yourself, you know," she said matter-of-factly.

"Okay." He thought it was better to just agree with her. She seemed to know what she was talking

about.

She squinted at him for a minute before nodding her head. "You want to be friends?"

"You said I had cooties."

She rolled her eyes. " All boys have cooties. I'll still be your friend."

He shrugged, placated enough. He probably needed a friend, seeing as how he didn't have any.

"Okay."

"That means that I'll always be there for you when you need me," she told him. "Like if you're sad or

someone's beating you up or something. My mom told me that real friends are forever." She looked at

him closely. "You can be my real friend if you want."

"That sounds fine," he said slowly. He liked the idea of a real friend.

"Okay, well, see you later," she said, skipping away from him.

"Bye," he replied, starting to walk towards the line of cars parked by the curb. His mom's silver car

glinted in the sunlight as it pulled up at the end of the line.

"Hey, Edward?"

He turned around to face Rosalie. "Yeah?"

"You might not have cooties, you know," she conceded and then tilted her head thoughtfully. "But

your head still looks like it's on fire."

She left Edward standing there, mouth slightly agape, until he heard his name being called.

He hopped into the car, his hands firmly woven through his hair, and collected a kiss from his mom.

He thought of the bossy girl with the loud voice as they pulled out of the parking lot. He contemplated

his first day of kindergarten, how he had started with no friends and ended up with one real friend,

which seemed to him the best kind of all. One real friend was probably worth ten regular ones.

With that thought, a grin spread across his face and his hands drifted from his head.

Chapter 1

20 years later

Phone calls in the middle of the night almost always deliver bad news. This is expected. No one ever

calls at 2:53 AM just to say hello (unless, of course, they're drunk). No, the middle of the night phone

call is for accidents. It's for death. It's for heartbreak.

You hear the shrill ring. It breaks into the silence of the night and you bolt up in bed, fumbling for the

phone while your heart beats out of your chest. Your hands are shaking as you press the innocuous

little 'send' key because your body knows already, even before your brain has a chance to warm up

and begin imagining the scenarios, that this is going to be bad. That this might be the worst night of

your life.

But it's the phone calls that come in the middle of the day that are truly devastating. Calls at 4:13 in

the afternoon are supposed to be mundane. Bad news isn't delivered during regular business hours.

So it doesn't even cross your mind as you reach for the phone. You're blindsided when it happens. You

have no chance to prepare for it, to understand what the person on the other end of the line is saying

when they tell you something that changes your life.

I've been through both, the expected and the not. In the end neither is better or worse. They will both

turn your world upside down. It's just that the late-night calls give you a second to steel yourself.

I was expecting this phone call, the one that set all of it in motion. I knew that it would happen

eventually; it was inevitable. But it was theoretical in my mind, a hazy future that I'd shoved to the

back, right next to a dusty mental tutorial on how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey. It was information of

no particular use to me right now, but nonetheless something I knew I might need in the future.

Well, apparently this was the future.

It was Monday afternoon and I was gazing out the window of my office at the San Francisco skyline,

my chin resting in the palm of my hand. My foot bobbed erratically as my pump held on for dear life. I

was restless, unfocused. I told myself that it was just a case of the Mondays, a weekly affliction for

me, that I was mourning the loss of the weekend.

But what did I have to mourn? That I sat in my small studio apartment the entire time, alternating

between pacing the length of the single room I inhabited (which took an impressive seventeen

seconds, back and forth) and watching rom coms starring Meg Ryan? That the highlight of those two

days was talking to Alice without being interrupted by Jasper needing to know where his wallet or the

laptop cord or maybe his balls were? That man was constantly losing things, and usually when Alice

was on the phone with me. Jasper was mostly self-sufficient but when it came to keeping tabs on his

personal effects? Completely hopeless.

In the scheme of things, this weekend had been a bust. My social life was nothing to sneeze at, but as

the days and months of this past year had gone by, I found myself making excuses not to go out.

When I did, I counted down the minutes until I could get home. I felt strangely out of place, like I was

faking it, and I just didn't have the patience for that anymore. I couldn't imagine that I'd been very

good company lately, either. My friends, all from work, still included me in their plans but I was

finding that my refusals were becoming more frequent. That restless feeling was seeping into every

aspect of my life and it had only intensified after I got off the phone with Alice yesterday. Her voice

had never sounded so far away. I constantly missed her, sometimes so much that it literally hurt, but

this was something else. This was a feeling rooted deep in my gut.

As always, there was the whisper of an all-too-familiar name, but I clenched my jaw and forced it

away. I didn't want to think about that. About him.

I narrowed my eyes at the cloudless sky and silently willed it to fill with dark clouds to better match

my mood. I still held onto the childish belief that if I really wanted something to happen, it would. But

it was September, the beginning of our abbreviated summer in the city, and so the sky remained

stubbornly blue. Apparently the weather didn't give a shit about Rosalie Hale.

With a sigh, I turned back to my computer screen, my eyes darting immediately down to the tiny

numbers in the corner – 4:13. Another sigh escaped, this one louder and with greater irritation. The

clock seemed to be moving backwards. I could have sworn it was 4:45 the last time I looked.

The phone rang. I looked at it eagerly, grateful for a distraction. Alice's number flashed across the

screen and I snatched up the receiver.

"…think they're over by the dining room table on the hutch," she was saying. There was a rustle and

then her voice was clear, questioning. "Rose?"

"What'd he lose this time?" I asked, discarding my pump with a small flick of my toes.

"Keys. It's always the keys."

"It's nice to know some things never change."

She cleared her throat, staying suspiciously silent. My eyes narrowed at the sky again but they were

unseeing, focused instead on the deep timbre of Jasper's hushed voice. I could hear a telltale jingle.

"Alice?"

"Yeah, um, hold on. I'm helping Jasper find the keys real quick."

She was lying to me. Even if I hadn't heard the keys I would have known. Her voice shook minutely,

as if it were rebelling against the false words coming out of her mouth. No one else would notice that,

the slight tremor, but I wasn't anyone else and I knew something was wrong.

"Tell him to check his hand."

There was more silence, this time ominous, and then another hushed whisper followed by a hissed,

"Just tell her."

"Tell me what ?" I snapped, losing my patience.

"Rosalie…"

"If you can't spit it out, put Jasper on the phone," I sighed. He never had trouble telling me things,

whether they were solicited or not. I opened my top drawer, pulling out a handheld mirror with my

free hand. Might as well do a face check while I was waiting for Alice to tell me she was pregnant or

that Jasper finally popped the question or -

"Edward and Bella are getting married."

It was oddly fascinating watching all of the blood drain from my face, my mouth go from slightly

puckered in appraisal to utterly slack in shock, to observe the dilating of my eyes, wide and

disbelieving. My reflection started to tremble and I realized that it was my hands that were shaking,

not the rest of me. My body was still, unmoving. I was frozen, completely solidified and weighed

down. My heart had stopped beating altogether. I didn't need that part right now, anyway, did I? It

was better if it didn't work.

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