Emerging Swan

Chapter 4 - Forget It

It's a crime you let it happen to me
Nevermind, I'll let it happen to you
Out of mind, forget it there's nothing to lose
But my mind and all the things I wanted

Everytime I get it I throw it away
It's a sign, I get it, I wanna stay
By the time I lose it I'm not afraid
I'm alive but I can surely fake it

How can I believe when this cloud hangs over me
You're the part of me that I don't wanna see
Forget it

Forget It ~ Breaking Benjamin

***

Edward Cullen, 2020

Events: 2014

Alice's behaviour at Rose and Emmett's barbecue had made me more angry than I cared to express. I'd expressed it pretty well at the time, and had successfully embarrassed both myself and Alice completely. I'd had enough of Alice sticking her nose in my business all the time.

That had never and will never change.

My relationship with Lauren had been complicated over the six months that we'd broken up. Occasionally - like, twice - I had given into her wanton ways and spent a night with her, merely because I was damned to hell anyway, and it meant I could get laid without having my heart in it. Unfortunately, Lauren became even more clingy when I did that, and Alice seemed to think we were good together. Why, I had no idea, for Lauren was obviously a gold-digging bitch who wanted the money I'd inherit when my father died, and my trust fund. Oh, and perhaps the pretty decent sum of money I made working as a doctor. But I'd be damned if she was sinking her claws into the money I worked hard for.

It had been two weeks since the McCarty barbecue, and I was surviving, not living. Lauren was driving me round the bend: turning up at places I went to regularly like the hospital I worked in and the supermarket, breathing down the phone line for a few seconds before hanging up, and once she'd tipped something very acidic all over my front lawn so that the grass was completely scorched.

The only time I ever smoked or drank excessively was when I was stressed, and by fucking god was I stressed. I was beyond stressed. I'd refused to even talk to my sister, which had consequently meant that Jasper refused to talk to me. What the fuck ever. If he was too love-sick to realise that his fiancée was at fault, then fuck him. The only friends I'd spoken to at all in the past fourteen days were Rose and Emmett. People at work had noticed that I looked haggard, and some had commented. I ignored them. I was a doctor, I had shit to do. I could deal with my own shit.

Maybe.

She never thought so. She had chewed my ass out from day one.

I was just finishing up some work from home on an ordinary (but cigarette-filled) Tuesday evening, when I heard someone rap smartly on my door three times. I groaned and banged my head - perhaps too hard - on my desk, knowing that it would be Lauren. She hadn't come to my house for some time, instead pulling back a bit and going for the phoning-and-turning-up-at-random-places technique. I'd known it had been too good to be true to think she'd leave me alone some more.

I waited a few minutes, and was pleasantly surprised to not hear Miss Bitch Extreme knock again. However, my phone rang instead, and I let out a heated few profanities as I checked the called ID. It wasn't somebody I knew, so I answered it. If this was Lauren using a disposable cell or something...

"Yes?" I barked out.

"Edward Cullen?" asked a smooth, silky voice asked. Not Lauren. Thank Heaven for that. However, said voice was fucking gorgeous. It was clearly a woman, and I was already conjuring up mental images of someone exceedingly damn pretty...