3,969Welcome to my newest story!
First of all, happy birthday to Teresa, who gets this as a special gift on her special day. Happiest of birthdays from RockerWard, darling.
Usual housekeeping:
1. None of this would exist without Team Momo: Midnight Cougar and Alice's White Rabbits are in the editing chairs. AgoodWITCH, AushaPasha, RobsmyymmyCabanaboy and Eternally Addicted pre-read. Lizzie Paige made the gorgeous banner. MarieCarro made countless manips for this story, and they'll be unveiled in my FB Group LaMomo's Lair as the relevant chapters post.
2. If you're looking for an insta-love story, this ain't it. So be warned. It takes a while for our lovebirds' paths to cross, but I guarantee you the journey along the way is worth it.
3. The inspiration behind this story comes, once again, from my partner in crime Midnight Cougar. Two years ago she sent me a pic of a hot guy with tatts and told me, "you should write me an Edward like this." And this is the result. This Edward is a rocker, with tatts. Send flowers to MC because she deserves ALL the things. MarieCarro made me a manip from that original pic. I'll post it in my FB group LaMomo's Lair (type the name in the search bar).
4. Unless otherwise indicated, any lyrics you see in this story will be Momo originals. It was important to me that Edward's music be only HIS, and not from some other act. His band is also not the carbon copy of ONE existing band, but rather a mix of different elements from a lot of different people/bands. There's some Foo Fighters in there, some Pearl Jam, a lot of Incubus, the showmanship of Dave Gahan, Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons and the gritty lyrics of X Ambassadors. But Avalanche are their own thing. They're also not a heavy metal band-it's been done in fic, so I wanted to go a different route.
5. Posting schedule: the story will post once a week, generally on Saturdays. I'm in Italy with family but I promised Tee I'd debut Dreams Unwind for her birthday, so here we are. Chapter 2 will post on October 7.
This story is dedicated to the loving memory of Taylor Hawkins (1972-2022).
DREAMS UNWIND – CHAPTER 1
THEN – Edward's story
Seattle, WA – Late summer 2005
"Race you home?" Jasper asked, hopping back on his motorcycle.
I nodded and put my helmet back on. The engine of my old '83 Kawasaki revved, and I sped away in my brother's wake.
We'd restored these two clunkers last summer. Something we'd decided to do together before Jasper's last year of med school at U-Dub, before a residency match that could potentially fling my brother to the other end of the country. Yes, because the overachiever already knew he'd graduate from med school one year early.
Me? I was coasting through college. Pre-law wasn't my jam, but I'd promised our parents I'd keep at it until and unless my band broke it big. I was confident we would, sooner or later. I'd invested too much time and effort into Avalanche to see it go gently into the good night. We would make it somehow.
My father—a laid-back professor of history at U-Dub—had taken a philosophical approach to it. If the band was a passing fad, it would pass at some point, and I'd find my niche elsewhere. He wasn't hung up on law school. But he was hung up on the school part of it, so he'd demanded a steady, honorable GPA.
My mom … well, she was another matter altogether. She insisted on higher education. And when she'd seen my SAT score, she'd insisted on pre-law. After all, I was her last chance for having one of her children follow in her footsteps. She hadn't forbidden me time with the band. As one of Seattle's top divorce and family law attorneys, she was a shrewder negotiator than that. She'd known prohibitions would just push me further away from law school and into the waiting arms of my bandmates. So, she'd accepted Dad's compromise: keep up a decent GPA and balance my studies with my playing time. If I wanted new equipment or recording studio time, the dosh would come out of my own pocket.
I took the compromise without question. My priority was the band, as it had been for the last three years. I'd been playing guitar since high school, but meeting my bandmates in my freshman year at U-Dub had sealed the deal.
I was a more than average guitar player, but my real strength laid in singing and songwriting. Avalanche had kickass players when I joined, but none of them could sing or write. They'd welcomed me with open arms. In three years, Jake, Sam, Paul, and Victoria had become more than friends to me. We all wanted to make it big. We all wanted to record in real studios, play in real venues. We all wanted the dream of being rock stars.
We'd been chugging along through the local Battles of the Bands and handing out demos in clubs, and we played a steady stream of gigs. But the advantage of having two computer science majors in the band had given us an edge other old-school bands didn't have—yet. Avalanche was an internet band. We had a pretty lively page on MySpace. We were trying another new-fangled thing called Facebook. In the last few months, technology had thrown us another assist. Now we had a YouTube page where we posted videos of our demos and gigs. It was all about expanding our reach.
As computer science majors, Jake and Vic swore by these new sharing websites. They predicted they would completely change the landscape of the music industry. Paul was our keyboardist and sometime resident skeptic. When Jake and Vic heaped praise on our interactions on YouTube or MySpace, he repeated two words, full of doom and gloom: "Remember Napster." Sam, our rhythm guitarist and my writing partner, normally shrugged and replied, "Whatever gets us there." I tended to agree with Sam.
And we were getting there. Slowly and surely. We'd won a statewide contest recently. Nothing major, but it had cemented our name on the map and earned us more gigs. We'd pooled all the money we'd gotten for gigs in the last two years to pay for a recording studio session because we wanted a professionally produced demo. Jake and Vic—Avalanche's rhythm section of drums and bass guitar, respectively—were determined to send links to our MySpace profile to every producer or talent scout on the West Coast. They'd been doing just that for the last few months after we finally had a demo we were all happy with and worth sharing.
Despite spending the entire ride mulling over my musical prospects, I still made it home before Jasper. I'd left him in the dust. Again.
"Dude, you're old. You ride like old people," I sneered at him.
He couldn't dispute my barb. After all, he was four years older than I was. He elbowed me as I stopped to punch in the code for the garage. Mom's voice filtered in from the doorway, her words garbled by the clunky, hissy sounds of the opening door.
"Edward! There's a message for you, for Avalanche?"
My world stopped for a full ten seconds. I blinked. I opened my mouth, then retrieved my jaw off the floor.
After a long minute, Jasper gave me a break. "Go get that. I'll take care of the bikes."
With a wordless nod, I ran into the house, dumping my jacket and helmet on the first flat surface I found. The kitchen table? Who the fuck knew. I'd move my shit later.
"Mom? The message?"
"It's on the machine," she hollered from her office.
The band members all had cell phones, but to avoid missing any calls, I'd also put our landline as a contact on our demos. With the guys—and gal—we had an understanding—I'd act as first contact, then relay the info to the rest of the band. After that, we'd discuss shit and make any decisions together.
It took me a second to work the answering machine with my riding gloves still on. I didn't have the patience to take them off first; I was too keyed up.
After a handful of excruciating seconds, the disembodied voice announced, "You have … one … message."
Then I played the message that would change our lives forever.
"This is James Cutler at Cutler Management. I'm calling for Edward Cullen and Avalanche. I've heard good things about your band, and I'd like to discuss with you what you want to do with your future. I'd be interested in managing you. Please call me back at (206)-555-YYZZ."
James. Fucking. Cutler.
I needed to sit the fuck down and take a breather.
And that was where my brother found me ten minutes later. "Shut your cakehole or you'll catch flies, mate."
"James. Fucking. Cutler." I was stuck in a loop of surprise and disbelief.
Jasper put his hand to my forehead and mimicked taking my temperature. "No, you don't have a fever. So, what gives? In English, please."
"This is massive."
"Who's James Cutler?"
I snorted. Of course, he wouldn't know. How could he? "Well, Grey's Anatomy, he's only the top talent scout slash manager in this bloody state. Without him, the Seattle grunge scene wouldn't exist. Says he's heard good shit about us. I can't fucking believe it."
Jazz slapped my shoulder. "Well, believe it, baby bro. Call him back. What the fuck are you waiting for?"
Shit. Shit. "I gotta call Jake first. Mom!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.
Suddenly, I didn't feel so hot about speaking for the band without talking it out with them first. That meant I'd be skipping family dinner for the band meeting, and that wasn't okay with Esme Cullen. I had to warn her and appease her. Hence the rebel yell.
I could have brought the house down with it. I didn't care. The future of Avalanche was on the line.
&&&DREAMS&&&
"James. Fucking. Cutler."
Jake was starting to sound like a broken record. Bloody hell, he sounded like me.
"I know, Jake. So, what are we gonna do?"
Vic shook her mane of Titian hair with a resounding scoff. Her no-nonsense attitude counteracted my often paranoid one. Nothing about Vic screamed diva. She was a dedicated, hard worker and a team player. She was funny as hell. Also, unlike most of the girls who gravitated around the band, she'd never hit on me once, which was the really refreshing thing about her.
"We're wasting time asking that damn question, guys. 'A little less conversation, a little more action'." When Vic resorted to music quotes, she was dead serious.
I heaved an anxious sigh. "You're right. Are you all okay with me calling Cutler first?"
They all mumbled their assent in a disjointed choir of nods and yeses.
Sam, the steady, cool-beans dude who finished my riffs and wrote choirs to my verses, slapped my shoulder with a big smile. "It could be our chance. We trust you. So, call the man back."
"Now?" I was still fucking nervous about it.
"No time like the present."
Another deep breath. "Okay then."
I grabbed my cell, punched in Cutler's number, switched on the speakers, and waited for the call to ring through.
"James Cutler."
"Mister Cutler, hi. This is Edward Cullen. I'm returning your call—"
Then, thankfully, Cutler interrupted me, taking me out of my misery. "Thank you, Edward. Now, I'd like to meet with the whole band. The sooner, the better."
"Name a place and time and we'll be there."
My nerves dissipated. We were fucking doing this.
&&&DREAMS&&&
Two days later, we arrived at Cutler's office in downtown Seattle. The entire history of Seattle's music greats hung on the walls of that office—in every poster, every platinum record, every award, every photograph.
We'd decided not to present an artificial image of ourselves at this meeting. Nobody was wearing the polyester suit they'd stuffed at the bottom of their closets after wearing it once. We weren't in stage gear either because this was still a business meeting. Vic called it rock chic—good jeans with minimal rips, biker jackets, plain T-shirts instead of band ones. We were very aware of what our image conveyed on a stage. We were under no illusions that "making it big" would imply some well-orchestrated changes in the way we presented ourselves.
After a once-over that lingered on me longer than on my bandmates, Cutler's receptionist led us to a conference room. She told us Mr. Cutler would join us momentarily and offered us refreshments. We all declined and waited in silence.
Cutler came in ten minutes later. I'd never met him, but his fame in the industry preceded him. Even if you didn't know him, he was one of those people you knew of. A tall, pale and lanky man with wavy blond hair and deep blue eyes, Cutler entered the room accompanied by another guy. Another tall guy—Black, with chiseled features, a crown of deadlocks, and piercing gray eyes—strode in like he owned the place and sat beside Cutler. Both wore the kind of smart, edgy suits that screamed custom-made.
"Gentlemen and lady," Cutler started, nodding at Victoria. "It's a pleasure to meet you all. I'm Jamie Cutler, and this is my partner Laurent Lamont."
After introductions, Jamie kicked things into high gear. Laurent didn't cut in but seemed intent on analyzing each of us. His gaze roamed the room, dwelling on whoever was speaking at the moment.
"I've been following you for a few months. I'll tell you what I got out of my observations. Then you can tell me how far off they are," he began. His smile and shrewd look seemed to indicate he wasn't expecting to be far off. At all. "You're a solid live band. Your performances are tight, well practiced, and well timed. You know how to build a setlist. You're natural performers; you know how to own a stage. I don't know who the main writers are here." He paused, throwing a glance around the table.
Sam and I raised our hands. "Sam and I write mostly."
He nodded, then continued. "You're a rock band. Unapologetically. You've absorbed a lot of varied influences, but you're not pretending to be anything else. You're not claiming to reinvent the wheel. I believe there's always space for that in the industry, and I like the honesty, too."
"'Rock and roll will never die'." Vic, of course, had to throw in a quote.
"Precisely," Jamie answered. "Rock can sound like a million different things anyway. You've picked the one you like best. It just so happens you're fairly good at doing it, too, which helps. I'm confident I could get you a decent recording contract with your existing material. However, if you decide I'm the right fit for your band, I'm going to be brutally honest. You'd have a shitload of work to do if you want to play with the majors. You'll need to switch gears, start thinking about what you do in different terms."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Glad you asked. For starters, this is a business. Don't fool yourselves otherwise. Your music is a product. Thinking you're out there, only following the flame of inspiration is naïve at best. A recipe for disaster at worst. Let me ask you a question. How long do you want to do this? A year? Two? Five? Ten? The rest of your lives?"
Speechless, we looked at each other. Nobody answered. Shit, I had no firm idea for myself either. We'd never thought about what would happen if or when we broke it big. Huge mistake.
"See, the fact you don't have a clear answer worries me. You need to figure this shit out. Because this industry chews you up and spits you out, and if you're not prepared for it, you'll feel like you're on a perpetual spin cycle. If you don't know that you're in this for the long haul, you won't have staying power. At the end of the day, this is a job. It's fun. It opens a lot of doors. It's not a nine to five, that's for damn sure. It'll give you a privileged life of doing something you truly love. But it's still a job. It requires determination and professionalism. It'll imply long weeks, months even, away from your own beds and on brutal schedules. You'll have deadlines. Contractual obligations. Press commitments. Media appearances. There will be shit you can control and shit you can't control. It'll be a vortex of stuff and people around you. And it'll be spinning so fast you won't be able to tell who your real friends are sometimes."
"Are you trying to scare us off, Jamie?" Sam asked. "Because it's working."
Cutler shook his head. "No. But I'm asking if you're ready for that, which brings me to my second set of warnings. I don't work with addicts. 'Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll' is a terrible slogan. In real life, those things are incompatible. Again, recipe for disaster. I don't work with disasters. I work with professionals. This is the deal I'm proposing," he added, pushing a printed document toward us. "You don't have to answer now. Don't jump into things. Read it. Discuss it. Find the answers to those questions. How long do you want to do this? How serious are you about the commitment it requires? Then come back to me. Any questions?"
"Do you mind if we have a lawyer look this over for us?" My mom was a lawyer. One thing she'd drilled into me was never to sign shit without verifying it first.
"Ah, someone did their homework. Yes, absolutely. Don't assume you can trust me. You don't know me. Yet."
"Can we? Trust you, I mean?" Victoria asked, pointing a finger in his direction.
"Would you? You just met me." Jamie flashed her a megawatt smile.
"Hell, no. You're nothing to me. For now," she added after a long beat.
"Looks and brains. Very well, Miss Sharpe. That quick wit will serve you well. It's been a pleasure, guys. Call me when you've made a decision."
The unspoken implication we all heard was, "Don't take too long."
&&&DREAMS&&&
After a high-octane call with my mom where I alternated between spurts of enthusiasm and fretting over James's proposed deal, she put her foot down and told me to bring the whole crew home. She'd feed us, read that draft contract, and answer the millions of questions we had.
"Thank you, Mrs. C. We appreciate you doing this for us," Sam began between bites of Mum's potato salad.
"Don't even mention it, kids. I'm happy you're all being given this opportunity." Her gaze lingered on me.
I knew I'd get a separate talk later, one that would also involve my dad.
"Still, we're grateful," Jake added. "Because we read that thing, but even mister pre-law here didn't have lots of intelligent things to say."
My mom chuckled. "To Edward's defense, this is a peculiar niche of the law. It requires an expertise even I don't have."
That worried me.
"But I know someone who does." She opened a drawer of her desk, rummaged for a bit, then pushed a business card toward me. "John is an intellectual property lawyer, and he's had a few entertainment industry clients in the past. I'll tell him you'll give him a call."
"Mom, I don't think we can afford your colleague on our budget," I chided her jokingly.
She smiled at me. "You'll get the friends and family discount."
"What's intellectual property?" Paul asked. It figured that a bio-chem major wouldn't be familiar with the concept.
"Edward, you should know the answer to this one. Want to try answering?" My mom winked at me.
"The easy definition is that it's a work or invention resulting from creativity. The music we write is intellectual property, for one."
"Content is intellectual property. Software is intellectual property," Jake added.
"Well said, both of you," Mom commented. "An intellectual property lawyer will help you protect what you create. An entertainment lawyer will make sure you don't get swindled out the wazoo by managers or record labels."
"Thank you, Mrs. C," Vic said. The guys echoed her. "Guys, I don't know about you, but I have class tomorrow. And I'm sure Mrs. Cullen has to work. Let's move it."
Jake, Paul, and Sam all got hugs from my mom—suckers—and so did Vic. Then they prepared to leave.
When I got back into the house after they left, Mom and Dad were waiting for me on the couch in the front room.
"It seems like you've had quite the day," Dad said.
I plonked on the ottoman in front of them, chuckling at my dad's turn of phrase and at his cadence.
The lilt of his original Scottish accent would never disappear, even if we lived in Washington for the next century. Mom's had never been as pronounced, but Dad's was its own entity. Even after ten years away from Scotland, hearing him speak when he was relaxed like this, and more prone to slide back into his brogue, made me nostalgic for the life we'd left behind in Edinburgh, despite how good our life here had been so far.
And now, for me, it had the potential of being even better.
"Understatement of the century," I said.
"You have a lot of decisions to make, Edward." Of course, my mom would cut to the chase, dive into practicalities.
There were no recriminations, no staunch opposition. Hell, she'd been helpful and given us a referral for a lawyer.
"You're not against this?" I couldn't keep the disbelief out of my voice.
She shook her head with a wistful expression on her face. "Oh, I must have bungled this badly if you're asking me that now."
"I'm surprised, Mom. I expected to have a fight on my hands."
"There, there now. Let's not be dramatic," my dad interjected.
Between the closed vowels and the deep, rolled r's, Dad's accent came out in full force. Carlisle Cullen eschewed conflict for the sake of it, but he wasn't a doormat either.
"I'm just trying to understand. That's all."
"Oh, Edward." Mom grasped my hand. "I'm proud and happy that you have this opportunity. That your hard work is paying off. Of course, I'm concerned. I'm your mother. Your wellbeing will always be a priority for your father and me."
"So, you're not gonna keep me from doing this?"
She heaved a deep sigh. "You're twenty-one. I can't legally bar you from doing anything, and I wouldn't do it even if I could. I just want you to make informed decisions. This is your life. Do you think doing this full-time would make you happy? Can you see yourself doing this for years on end? Do you think your bandmates are as serious as you are? James asked probing questions for a reason."
When I opened my mouth to answer, she stopped me. "Don't give hasty answers, Edward. Think about it. We'll be here for you either way."
My parents rocked.
The "A little less conversation, a little more action" line belongs to Elvis. Victoria likes to borrow quotes.
How do we like our guys?