Collision || A Twilight Fanfic

Chapter 14

There was an intricacy to breakups that Spencer had not yet grasped. She wanted to feel everything at once. Rid her memory of all things Cullen for once and all.

But this type of heartbreak wasn't like the others. It consumed you bit by bit. Chipping away at your very soul until there was nothing left but the shell of a person. It was the kind of heartbreak people wrote songs about, poetry about, books about. The kind that is forever etched into your mind as the one that altered the chemical composition of your being. The one that becomes a checkpoint for your life – there is you before the heartbreak and the you afterward.

Spencer didn't want to feel all of that. She needed her life to go on as if nothing had happened. Maybe this was the push she needed to go to med school. Maybe this was the reason she moved out of state and traveled. Maybe this was the point in her life where all the good things came.

Nothing works out as one wants.

She fell into a vicious cycle.

She would wake. She would go to work. She would come home. She would cry. She would sleep. Then, she would wake again.

And somehow a whole month had gone by.

She would wake. She would work. She would cry. She would sleep. Every. Single. Day.

At some point, Spencer was made aware of Bella Swan's similar status. The poor girl had suffered the same fate she had. It made her think they had been cursed. If there were vampires and werewolves, witches and curses didn't seem like such a fantastical idea anymore.

Maybe that's what the two Cullen men had done to them. Cursed them with their love. Their bittersweet love.

One thing kept playing in Spencer's head. Words Carlisle had used to make sure the wound never closed. 'Just like your father.' That sentence had been carved into her skin, sending shivers down her spine each time she remembered it. He was right. She had been resolute in the idea of leaving everyone she loved behind for him. For a simple man that cared more about his reputation than her heart.

It made her think too much of Joshua Uley. She had been very young when he left. With the years the image of him started fading from her memory. First, she couldn't remember his voice. Then, his face blurred. Finally, she could not even remember how it felt to be hugged by him.

She knew Sam resembled him the most in appearance. Their mother would often cry about how much he reminded her of him. But she always said Spencer had his eyes and his soul.

"If only you both could have met him when we fell in love," Allison would cry to them – inebriation aiding to her woes. "My little Spence, your heart is just like his was. But I know you are stronger."

The girl had never understood what her mother had meant. Until now. She felt she was all the bad parts of her father. She was going to abandon her family in a selfish search for a life that made sense to her. No longer could she recall the way her father would read her to sleep; how he would kiss her wounds after getting them clean and wrapped; how he celebrated each time she came home with an outstanding grade. Now all she could recall were the bad things he did. The way he acted when he would drink; how he would fight with her mother when he thought the kids weren't listening; how he left his family without a second thought.

Glimpses of her childhood flooded her mind. Her brain nitpicking at the specific bad moments she felt identified with.

That particular Saturday one memory stood out. She remembered every time her father would get angry, specifically the thing he would do right after. In the entrance hallway closet, there was a floorboard that was loose. Inside, Joshua would store a collection of liquor bottles hidden from the eyes of his family. Spencer had once investigated the hiding place. At her young age, she had no idea what the liquids were, but she knew it made her father act out of the ordinary and be led by his emotions.