I wake up the next morning on one of the two huge inflatable air mattresses that Dallas set up for us three girls last night - after we all couldn't decide on who deserved the bed more. I blink and squint against the bright sunlight pouring in through the double doors, the thin, white curtains doing nothing to shield my eyes. Shifting my watery gaze around the room, I notice that Jordan isn't here and that Sara has two arms wrapped around my abdomen with her head resting against my arm, resulting in it "falling asleep". I chuckle softly, not wanting to wake her but also needing to go downstairs and confront everyone once again.
I told Nick and Demi everything. I told them about my past, from as far back as I can remember. I told them about my self-harming and my disordered eating: how it all started, what triggers me, why I still continue to do it. I told them about my sexuality, explaining that I am attracted to both guys and girls yet still leaving out my crush on Sara because I don't know how she'd handle it.
They didn't say anything.
When I was finally finished sharing my sob story, they flashed me barely there smiles and shut themselves in the other guest bedroom for the rest of the night.
I emit a heavy sigh, completely forgetting about the girl sleeping on me until the slight pressure on my arm alleviates.
"What's wrong?" She mumbles, barely awake.
"Nothing."
She looks at me, propping her head up with her palm and elbow. "You're honestly going to pull that card - after everything last night?"
I direct my gaze away from her, guiltily chewing on my lower lip. "They didn't say anything to me," I slowly remind. "What if they want nothing to do with me? What if they hate me now or-"
"Or what if you're just overthinking everything?" I sigh again. "C'mon," she grips my arm, gently tugging me to my feet, "I'm going to go brush my teeth and fix my hair, then I'll walk downstairs with you." She offers a reassuring smile - and I resist the urge to inform her that her hair is already perfect - before leaving me with my own thoughts.
~
"I should seriously just walk out that front door right now and save everybody the hassle," I grumble as Sara and I descend the stairs.
"Good luck having everyone stare at you for wearing pajamas." I roll my eyes at her dry retort.
Jordan is sitting at the dining room table, her back towards us, scrolling through her phone. Demi and Nick are in the kitchen, and Dallas is nowhere to be found.
Jordan groans, setting her phone down and shielding her face in the gap between her folded arms.
Demi chuckles. "Still no luck?"
"I don't understand how Bailey and Sara do this," Jordan's response is muffled, but she then lifts her head to face our mother. "They can just spew out song lyrics whereas I have to ramble for hours to get my point across."
Sara gently nudges me in the ribs with her elbow. "Sounds to me like she's trying to be like you just a tiny bit," she grins.
Though I don't want her to be like me in many aspects, if any, I can't hide the small smile that graces my lips.
"Baby-girl, I don't mind your rambling," Demi reassures.
"But I do. It's irritating." She sighs before continuing to scroll through her phone.
"You ready?" Sara whispers to me, and I begrudgingly nod. "I'm proud of you." She interlocks our hands and leads us down the last of the stairs.
"What exactly are you trying to do?" I ask Jordan, dropping Sara's hand when my sister turns to face me.
"Learn songs to quote so that I don't ramble." She pouts. "It's not working very well."
I chuckle and approach her, seeing that she has a list of music videos and lyric videos on her phone. "Why are they all Taylor Swift?"
"Because that's who you and Sara quote all the time," she replies in a tone that suggests I should have already known the answer.
Shaking my head, I snatch her phone away from her - while ignoring her protests -, log out of her YouTube account, and log into mine.
"There." I return her phone to her. "Knock yourself out."
"You listen to a lot of music," She mutters to herself as I enter the spacious kitchen.
I lean against the doorframe, watching as Demi and Nick prepare breakfast.
"We're all going to get food poisoning and die," I state.
"You act as if we're totally incompetent," Demi says.
"Ya'll have been in that kitchen for two hours now," Jordan chimes.
"Nobody asked you." Demi rolls her eyes.
"Where's Dallas?" I wonder.
"Shower." I nod, acknowledging Demi's response. "What's wrong, Bailey?"
"Why do you just assume that something's wrong?"
Her expression mimics her worried tone. "You just seem kind of off, I guess, like you're not really here."
I nearly cringe, knowing that's how I felt yesterday before I freaked out on everyone. I don't even remember what I said, and I can barely remember what I did. All I can remember is really wanting to die - feeling so worthless that I figured the world would be better off without me.
Through my peripheral vision, I notice Dallas exiting her bedroom. "I'm fine," I falsely reassure.
Demi opens her mouth to speak, but Dallas unknowingly cuts her off. "Mom called, Demi."
Demi shifts her still suspicious gaze from me to Dallas. "What'd she say?"
"She wants us all to meet up at Kevin's house to celebrate."
"Celebrate what exactly?"
Dallas arches an eyebrow. "Today's July 4th, Dems." She chuckles.
Demi's eyes widen. "Shit, seriously?" She abandons the stove to grab her phone off the opposite counter.
"And this is why people say you can't cook," Nick teases. "You leave the stove unattended."
Demi gently smacks his shoulder as she scrolls through her phone. "How did I forget that today is a holiday?" She groans, setting her phone back down on the counter.
"You have been going through a lot lately," I point out, shrugging. "Plus, it's not like you forgot about Christmas or something. All we need to do is get some fireworks."
"Can we go to a carnival?" Sara squeals.
"Wait," Dallas holds her hands up, "aren't your parents back in town today?"
Sara shakes her head. "They called last night, saying that their flight got cancelled. They were freaking out and apologizing and scrambling to find the quickest flight back, but I told them to just calm down and stay put for a little bit. What good is worrying going to do?"
"Don't take this the wrong way," Demi interjects, and I cringe at the fact that she's probably going to offend Sara in 0.2 seconds, "but do you even like your parents?"
To my surprise and relief, Sara laughs. "I love my parents," she reassures. "Yes, they can be overprotective, and yes, sometimes it seems as if they put their work ahead of me, but I still love them regardless, and they mean well. Now, about that carnival..."
"I've never been to one," I inform, and I swear everyone in the room gasps and stares at me as if I just turned into Beyoncé's twin right in front of them.
"You've never been to a carnival?" Jordan gasps. "How?"
I shrug. "I wasn't really apart of the whole family bonding time growing up."
"So what did y'all do on the fourth and during the summer?"
"Oh, my family went out, but they always left me either home alone or with Matthew," I reply in an easy tone, then look down and toy with my fingers as I realize what I said - at what I was implying.
"I never thought that I'd say this," Demi speaks, finally breaking the awkward silence, "but I am glad that I shot that son of a bitch, even if it was indirectly."
I can't help but to chuckle, which further dissipates the tense, somber mood.
"Mom agreed to the carnival idea," Dallas suddenly interjects, staring at her phone screen.
"Bailey's definitely going," Nick says.
"Why am I the one getting called out?"
"You just said that you've never been to a carnival," he deadpans. "That's unacceptable."
"Can we pause the carnival conversation for two minutes? Why were you acting all sullen earlier?" Demi questions me.
"I said that I was fine."
"And I'm saying that I don't believe you. Sara?"
"Hm?" The blonde girl locks eyes with Demi.
"Do you know why Bailey would be upset?"
"How would I know?" I nearly facepalm at how her tone resembles a squeak; she's a terrible liar.
Demi raises her eyebrows, and I hate to admit that she looks intimidating as fuck. "So you have no idea as to why my daughter would be upset? She hasn't told you a single thing or confided in you at all?"
Sara's apologetic gaze flickers to me for a split second, and that's when I know that I'm completely screwed. She stares at the floor as she hurriedly speaks her next words. "She's afraid that you and Nick are going to hate her or disown her or something."
If she didn't look so guilty, I'd probably strangle her.
Demi shifts her now confused expression to me. "Why would you think that?"
"Really?" I snort. "I'm a bisexual cutter who forces herself to throw up."
I can see Demi just barely flinch at my words.
"Yet you still say that you're nothing like mom," Jordan absentmindedly sighs, continuing to scroll through her phone. "Y'know," she continues, placing her phone down on the table, "how most teenagers get 'the talk'?"
An amused smirk creeps onto my face at her innocence. "The sex talk?"
"Yeah, that," she responds in a flat tone, clearly not pleased with my rewording. "Well, I got a watered-down version of that because mom tended to focus more on the whole 'be yourself, love whoever you want and yada yada yada' inspirational kind of talks."
"Yada yada yada?" Demi raises her eyebrows in amusement. "That's all that you took away from our talks?"
Jordan shrugs, picking up her phone once again. "I think I know where I got my rambling from." Demi rolls her eyes.
"Wait," I pipe up, "so, you honestly don't care if I....I don't know...marry a girl one day?"
"Nope," Demi easily replies, shaking her head slightly. "And your dad doesn't either. Right, babe?" She turns to Nick, who shakes his head, his back towards us as he turns off the stove.
"I just can't believe we're still having this conversation." He turns around to face me. "Bailey, none of us care if you're straight, bisexual, lesbian, pansexual, a-"
"We get it, okay? A lot of letters," I cut him off, chuckling slightly.
"Despite everything and anything, we'll always love you, Bailey," Demi promises.
With a small smile gracing my lips, I hug her.
"Thank you," I murmur.
She kisses my head. "Just for the record," she whispers in my ear, "I approve of her."
Hearing the slight teasing smirk in her tone as she refers to Sara causes my face to flush. "There's nothing going on," I mumble, releasing her.
She grins. "It's cute that you honestly believe that."
Rolling my eyes at her, I hug Nick, but we end up quickly separating when a familiar tune begins to play. Everyone turns to Jordan, who looks up at all of us with wide eyes.
"I don't know what I did."
Chuckling, I approach her. "You picked a Taylor song," I say.
"And it reminds me of Demi and Nick!" Sara squeals, and I raise my eyebrows at her.
"No," I shake my head, "just stop talking before I start having nightmares."
"He said 'let's get out of this town'," Sara begins to sing, but I lean over the table and tap the phone screen, successfully silencing the music. "Hey!" She pouts.
"Nightmares," I remind with a sarcastic smile.
"I'll just find some images with lyrics," Jordan reasons, then looks up from her phone with furrowed eyebrows. "Mom, did you ever write any songs about Nick?"
"We wrote songs together," Nick interjects.
"But they weren't about you," Demi states.
"Can you not lie well anymore or what?" Nick jokes, feigning offense.
Jordan shakes her head, once again returning her attention to her phone. "I'll just look it up."
"Are we buying fireworks today?" I ask.
"You do have one scattered brain, don't you?" Sara observes, and I nod while grinning cheekily.
"I also may or may not be somewhat of a pyromaniac in training."
"What were you wearing?" Jordan suddenly shrieks with a gasp.
"I really hope that she's talking about you," Demi says to Nick.
"Me?" He snorts. "I'm not the one who has leaked photos-"
"Stop talking." He chuckles at her hasty interruption.
"No, seriously," Jordan continues, "what were you wearing? Better yet, what were you not wearing?" She looks up at all of us. "Clothing would be the answer."
"Now I'm actually worried," Demi mutters.
"Let me see," I demand, approaching Jordan.
She tilts her phone towards me, and my jaw drops.
In the photo, Demi wears some black, skin-tight sleeveless top thing that resembles tar melted onto her abdomen, and don't even get me started on the shit around her shoulders that resembles molting bird feathers. Despite the fact that the collar of the shirt is high, the hem is cut into a "V" shape. As for her pants, well, she's not wearing any - just some brown underwear that has black lines on the side, resembling stitches...or some kind of bullet holster belt.
"Holy fuck." I lock eyes with Demi for a second before returning my gaze to the phone screen. "Holy shit."
"Find a different reaction," Demi grumbles.
"Holy Hell."
"One that doesn't involve cursing."
"No cursing," I mumble, then inhale a deep breath and slowly release it as I think of an appropriate reaction. "Was this photoshopped?" I ask but soon realize how the question sounds. "Not in the I-think-that-this-photo-is-fake-and-unrealistically-pretty kind of way," I hastily add, "but like I-hope-that-the-photo-is-fake-because-moms-aren't-supposed-to-dress-like-that."
"I do have one question," Jordan hesitantly speaks and slides her phone across the table towards Demi. "Was this before or after I was born?"
Upon noticing the picture, Demi places her face in her hands, and Nick's eyebrows raise to his hairline.
"Is it that bad?" Dallas chuckles, shuffling closer to Jordan's phone with Sara in tow. "Damn."
"Can we stop talking about this?" Demi wonders, uncovering her face to reveal cheeks flushed from embarrassment. "I was stupid and young and-"
"How old were you?" Jordan counters.
She hesitates, her gaze flickering away from my sister. "Seventeen."
I snort. "Bullshit."
She glares at me.
"Your hair wasn't that short when you were seventeen," Sara speaks. "It looks more like you in your twenties." We all turn to face her. "What?" Her expression turns sheepish. "Oh, was that something I wasn't supposed to say out loud?" She awkwardly claims a seat at the table, as if trying to take all of the attention off of her and her blunder.
Demi sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. "How about we all just change the subject?"
"Okay," I nod, looking back down at the picture, "you looked like that after having two kids?"
"That is not what I meant," Demi groans.
"How old was I exactly?" Jordan inquires.
"You were still in a crib, I think," Demi unenthusiastically replies.
"So," I drag out the vowel, "I probably was barely three by then," I tick off on my index finger, "Jordan was still in a crib," another tick, "and yet you still looked like that?" I gesture to the phone.
"Damn," Dallas repeats, taking the seat beside Sara, "you go, little sis."
Demi rolls her eyes.
"I just want to know why I've never seen the photo," Nick mutters, earning narrowed eyes from Demi. "What?"
She shakes her head. "It was supposed to be the cover art for my fifth album," Demi explains, "but I decided to drop it and go with something less scandalous or whatever." She shrugs. "I guess it got leaked or something throughout the years."
"You wanted that," Nick gestures to the photo, "as the cover art for your fifth album?"
Demi raises an eyebrow. "Jealous?"
"A little bit." She giggles. "Do you realize how many guys would buy the album just for the photo?"
Demi scrunches her face up in disgust. "That's weird."
"Does this mean that you have other leaked photos online?" I question, then grab Jordan's phone.
"What are you doing?" Jordan asks.
"Finding potential blackmail."
"Bailey, give me the phone," Demi demands, but I grin mischievously and wait for my search to load.
How bad can the pictures be anyways?"
Dallas chuckles. "Demi, honestly, how bad can the pictures be?"
Thanks for stealing my thought.
Demi stares at her older sister blankly. "Really? Do you not remember all of the times mom woke up the entire house by screaming at me for doing stupid things?"
Dallas frowns and furrows her eyebrows in thought. "Bailey, give her the phone."
"Do you honestly want me to come over there and take it from you?"
I consider Demi's words. "'I'd like to see you try, yes." Returning my attention to the phone, I've realized that the pictures have loaded. "Why is SafeSearch blocking some of the pictures?" I look up at my mother, completely horrified. "What the hell kind of pictures were you taking?"
She lunges for me, but, because the table we're all standing around is circular shaped, I step backwards in the opposite direction. I continue to scroll through the photos. There are a lot of pictures from her teenage years, an almost overwhelming amount.
"Holy shit, is somebody taking body shots off of you?" I shriek at the sight of one photo that gains my attention.
"Okay, that's enough, Drama Queen," Nick says, plucking the phone out of my grasp from behind.
I turn around, pouting as he holds the phone over his head, out of my reach, and taps on the screen a couple of times. He then slides the phone across the table, back towards Jordan.
"You shouldn't even know what a body shot is," Demi says exasperatedly.
"You're honestly going to scold me after those pictures? Really?"
She sighs. "Consider me your walking reference as how to not act during your teenage years."
"I did see some pictures of you posing rather....interestingly with a couple of girls." I raise an eyebrow in question. "Is that why you're so okay with my sexuality?"
"Partly," she slowly answers after a pause. "I believe that there are a helluva lot worse things that someone can do than fall in love with another person of the same sex. With that being said, maybe my opinion is biased because I did experiment during my teenage years."
Amused, I quirk one corner of my mouth upwards. "Define experiment."
She hesitates. "I had flings with girls."
"Cool For The Summer!" Sara abruptly shouts, but then clamps a hand against her mouth. "That was really loud. I'm sorry."
Demi chuckles, claiming a seat beside Jordan, and Nick, and I follow her lead. "No, you're right about that song."
"I never took that song seriously," I confess. "I mean, who would be willing to die for someone they just had a fling with?"
Demi ponders over my words. "When lines become blurred."
"So, when it becomes unclear what everybody wants?" I wonder aloud. "Who fell for who?"
"When did you become so interested in my personal life?" Demi retorts while wearing a small smile.
I shrug. "Since I realized that you're not exactly the open book that you're perceived to be."
"The kid has a point, Dems," Dallas chimes before rising to her feet and heading for the kitchen; the sound of plates and glasses clinking together can be heard moments later.
Demi nibbles on her bottom lip, probably hesitating over her next words. "I fell for her, but I denied my own feelings and told myself that I was too young to know the definition of love and about anything regarding to my sexuality. I put an end to our friends-with-benefits type relationship and told her that I wanted nothing to do with her. I haven't spoken to her since."
"Wow," I murmur, eyebrows raised slightly in surprise.
"So you denied your feelings at first?" Sara asks Demi, who nods.
"I denied my feelings because I cared way too much about how other people would react. I also didn't want to jeopardize our friendship by admitting my feelings to her, but I ultimately ended up ruining our friendship anyways." Demi shrugs. "I acted really stupid."
"Do you regret it?"
Demi mulls over Sara's words. "If anything, I regret that we're no longer friends, but I don't regret what has resulted since then," Demi explains, glancing at Jordan, Nick, and me.
The room falls silent, the only sound being of Dallas in the kitchen serving breakfast onto plates. At least, I think that is what she's doing.
"Bailey," Sara gains my attention, "can I-can I talk to you upstairs?" Without even gauging my reaction, she stands and walks towards the staircase.
"Go," Demi mouths to me, ushering me away from the table with two hands.
I roll my eyes and bite back chuckles at her eagerness. I follow Sara up the stairs, silently wondering what she wants to talk with me about.
We sit on the only actual bed in the guest bedroom that the three of us girls share. She sits in front of me with her legs criss-crossed underneath her. I lean against the headboard, waiting for her to speak.
Her gaze lowers to her lap as she toys with her fingers. "Do you like me?" she blurts.
I blink at her, sure that I've heard her wrong. "What?"
"It's just," her eyes raise towards mine for a second before lowering once again, "I really, really like you, and I know that's kind of obvious because I've kissed you before, but I don't even really know what I want, and I certainly have no idea what you want. You might not even really like me, for all that I know, and with everything that has happened with Preston lately, I'm just confused with my own feelings, and-" I cut off her rambling by kissing her, surprising both her and myself. When I break our embrace, I notice that her cheeks have flushed a bright shade of pink. "Does this mean that you like me?"
"Would I kiss you if I didn't?" Her blush seems to only worsen at my words.
"But I don't even know what I want," she mumbles, once again staring at her lap.
I gently tilt her chin up so that she's facing me; her blue eyes are the saddest that I've ever seen them. "Don't be ashamed for not knowing what you want. I don't expect you to have all of the answers. I like you, sure, but that doesn't mean you have to like me back or disregard your wants and your needs for the sake of pleasing me. I would hate myself if you did that."
Her eyebrows furrow slightly. "So you don't want me to like you?"
"I just want you to be happy."
She slowly nods. I smile and intertwine our fingers for a second before dropping her hand and rising to my feet. As I'm about to leave, she grips my wrist, stands, and connects our lips once again. This kiss is deeper, more like some passionate scene from one of those dumb romance novels, though we refrain from shoving our tongues down each others throat. Her lips are soft against mine, the sweetness of the kiss only emphasized by the faint taste of mint and her coconut chapstick. Out of breath, she rests her forehead against mine, and I almost giggle at the clicheness of it all.
"You make me happy," she admits, "but I don't want you waiting for me to be ready."
I take a step back, a small smile gracing my lips. "Show me that good things come to those who wait."
~
"Where's Sara?" Demi wonders once I've returned downstairs.
"Upstairs." She rolls her eyes at my sarcasm. "Taking a phone call."
Just as we were about to go back downstairs, Sara's phone rang, and I decided to leave her alone.
"What happened?" she interrogates, and I can't suppress the cheesy grin that morphs my lips; Demi squeals. "I know that look!"
"I don't," Jordan and Nick say in unison as Dallas starts to bring plates of breakfast out from the kitchen.
Dallas looks at me as she places a plate in front of both Jordan and Nick. "Oh, you've got it bad, girlie," she teases before returning to the kitchen, and I roll my eyes as my face heats up.
"What's going on?" Jordan inquires.
"I have a feeling I'm not going to like whatever it is," Nick grumbles.
"You're impossible," Demi says to him, then kisses him quickly; a grin lights up her face as they separate.
Nick glances between Demi and me. "You two seriously look like twins right - oh hell no, Demi; she's too young to be in love."
I laugh. "I'm not in love!"
"Deny it all you want to, sweetie, but your expression says otherwise," Demi continues the teasing, wearing a smirk.
"Am I the only one who thinks that she's too young?" Nick exasperates.
"Didn't you and Mom meet when y'all were fourteen?" Jordan retorts, giggling as Nick narrows his eyes at her.
Returning to the dining room with two more plates, Dallas gives Jordan a high five as she sets a plate in front of Demi and another one near the chair in front of me, which I claim. With two more plates to serve, Dallas once again finds herself in the kitchen.
"You've been hanging around your sister way too much," Nick says.
"Hey!" I chuckle. "At least she's learning from the best."
"Dal, seriously, be a waitress," Demi jokes as Dallas brings in the last of everything - a plate each for her and Sara as well as a plate of homemade cinnamon buns for us all to share - before finally sitting down to eat.
"Wait, am I going to die if I eat any of this," I shift my gaze between Demi and Nick, "because we all know that you both aren't exactly chefs."
"Why don't you try it and find out?" Nick retorts.
"You first."
Rolling his eyes, he consumes a forkful of the egg casserole and tears a piece off of a cinnamon bun, popping it into his mouth.
"I'll start making arrangements for your funeral," I inform in a feigned sympathetic tone while nodding. "Seriously, though, who cooked what?"
"I made the cinnamon buns while Demi was in charge of the egg dish," Nick explains. "Speaking of which, why are the eggs spicy?"
"We're all going to die," I deadpan, and Dallas gently smacks my shoulder while sniggering and scooping up her own forkful of eggs.
"It's a Spanish egg casserole," Jordan speaks, returning her fork to her plate after taking a bite. "One of Dad's recipes, I think."
Nick raises his eyebrows at Demi. "Wilmer taught you how to cook?"
She nods. "When we first started dating. He didn't teach me a whole lot, but it sufficed when he wasn't home and my only other options were to live off of take-out or hire somebody to cook for me."
Suddenly, stomping footsteps can be heard descending the stairs. Sara storms into the dining room with a furious expression on her face and slumps into the chair between Demi and me. Though she grips her fork so tightly that her knuckles turn white, and though she forcibly stabs at the food on her plate, I notice how her hands tremble slightly and how her bottom lip just barely quivers, as if she's trying not to cry.
"Sara," Dallas speaks after an awkward silence, "what's wrong?"
The blonde girl shakes her head and grumbles under her breath, continuing to stab at the eggs and forcibly shove them into her mouth. Though I know now is not the time, I can't help but to wonder how she's eating the food when she claimed that she can only eat organic? I hesitantly curl my fingers around her wrist, stopping her actions. She drops the fork, and an ear-piercing clank resonates throughout the otherwise silent room as metal greets porcelain. When her eyes lock onto mine, I'm surprised to see her blinking back tears.
"What happened, Sara?" Dallas continues to pry, though Sara doesn't look at her but instead keeps her gaze on me.
"Preston's on his way over here to pick me up."
~
Everyone seems to have moved into the living room after breakfast. While they're worrying over Sara and awaiting Preston's arrival, I slip away and hastily walk down the hallway towards the downstairs bathroom.
"Where are you going?"
I jump, startled, and spin around to find a worried Jordan.
"Just to the bathroom," I easily respond; I mean, I'm not exactly lying.
"Don't you want to be with her when Preston shows up?"
"I'll only be, like, two minutes." I force myself to laugh.
She chews on her bottom lip, her eyes shifting all around, no longer able to focus on me. "Please don't do it," she nearly whispers.
"I have no idea-"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about," she firmly contradicts, her eyes meeting mine once again. "Are you forgetting that I was there when you told Mom and Nick your story? You told them that you force yourself to throw up after you eat. Doing that will kill you, Bailey."
I sigh, thinking about how I've been expelling more and more blood from my body with every purge. I'm too scared of the results to research what causes it. What if it's something serious? What if I've done permanent damage to my body? What if I'm already basically done for?
"I'm fine, and you worry way too much," my voice sounds lifeless to my own ears.
What if I'm already dead? Simply breathing instead of living...
"What's going on here?" Demi appears with eyebrows furrowed, hands on hips, and her eyes shifting between Jordan and myself.
Jordan once again sinks her teeth into her bottom lip, but this time her gaze remains on me. However, just as she opens her mouth to speak, the doorbell rings. As they instinctively turn around to face the front door, I run down the remainder of the hallway, but it doesn't take long for me to hear footsteps from behind. I quickly try to lock myself in the bathroom, but Demi grips the doorknob before I can even shut the door.
"Baby-girl, please let us in," she pleads as we initiate a game of tug-of-war with the door.
Hot, angry tears sting my eyes as I feel my sanity snapping. I feel as if I'm watching my life unfold from afar, as if I'm not even control of my own body or mind anymore. My hands tremble I struggle to continuously bring the door towards me. I didn't even know Demi had such a grip.
"Just leave me alone!" I choke out, my voice sounding hoarse and far away.
Desperate, I continue to hold the door with one hand, then, knowing that there's no way I can reach the toilet without letting Jordan and Demi in, I lean over the bathroom sink and shove two fingers down my throat. With my first attempt proving unsuccessful, I hunch my body further over the sink and force my fingers to go further down. I barely even register the fact that my other hand slips away from the doorknob as I repeatedly gag, sending tears down my cheeks. Before I can manage to vomit up my breakfast, arms are wrapping around me, pushing me away from the sink and lifting me up into the air.
I feebly fight against Demi as she carries me from the bathroom to the living room. Looking around the room, I realize that Sara is nowhere to be found, but my throat hurts too much for me to voice my curiosity. Demi places me onto the couch, and I curl up into a ball in hopes to alleviate the somersaults that my stomach seems to be doing. The pounding in my head and the soreness of my throat probably isn't helping anything.
"What happened?" Nick questions, his worried, concerned expression mimicking Dallas's and Sara's.
I hear a sniffle, and I shift my attention to Demi, shocked to find her weeping. Nick steps closer to her, but she holds a hand up and shakes her head. Wiping away her tears, she heads for the kitchen, leaving the rest of us to deal with an awkward silence.
Demi finally returns moments later, carrying two glasses and a mug. I notice that one glass is empty; however, the other glass is full of what looks like water, though it's a bit clouded in color. She sets the empty glass and the mug on the coffee table in front of me.
"Here." She thrusts the glass with the clouded liquid at me, and I hesitantly take it, wondering what I'm supposed to do with it.
Mentally shrugging, I take a gulp of the liquid, wincing as it travels down my throat. Demi gently slaps my hands away from my mouth as if I'm some toddler.
"You're not supposed to drink it," she says, her tone emotionless - a complete contrast to her crying not even five minutes ago. "You're supposed to gargle it."
I roll my eyes, thinking about how she could have given me instructions before she copped an attitude. I bring the rim of the glass towards my lips, but I stop upon realizing that Nick is staring at Demi - unlike everyone else who is staring at me - with a seemingly frustrated expression. I take another gulp of the liquid, following Demi's orders and making sure that it coats every inch of my mouth and throat.
"What the hell is your problem, Demi?" Nick finally speaks as I spit the liquid into the empty glass.
"Do it again," Demi tells me, and I once again return the rim to my lips. "What's my problem?" She turns to Nick, sarcastic laughter escaping my lips. "Oh, I don't know, Nick. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I found my daughter with her fingers shoved down her throat, trying to force herself to throw up her breakfast."
Nick's eyes flicker to me as I ashamedly lower my gaze, swishing the last of the clouded water around in my mouth before spitting it into the once empty glass.
"After everything that she told us last night, you shouldn't be shutting down on her," he scolds.
"I'm not shutting down on her!"
"Yeah, Dems," Dallas interjects, "you kind of are."
"And what do you know?" Demi scoffs.
"I know that you're terrified of her ending up exactly like you," Dallas calmly states, and that's when I begin to see Demi's indifferent facade crumble. "You're afraid that you've already failed her, and you keep beating yourself up over your past mistakes.That's not fair to you, Demi, and it's not fair to your daughters or to Nick either."
By the time Dallas is finished speaking, Demi is crying silent tears. Nick embraces her in a hug that she returns, her fingers digging into his shirt as she clings to him. I awkwardly shift my attention away from them, deciding to try whatever is in the mug that Demi brought out. Upon taking a sip, I realize that it's tea, and I gulp it down in hopes of soothing my throat. I return my attention to my parents when I hear Demi sniffle, seeing her wipe away her tears. I suddenly recall the conversation that Nick had with Demi about family counseling. Although I would hate it, maybe we all could benefit from it...
I return my mug to the coffee table as Demi approaches me. She crouches down so that she's eye-level with me.
"Please don't end up like me," she whispers before embracing me in a tight hug that I return.
"I'm sorry," I apologize, just now realizing how much better my throat is already feeling.
She releases me, shaking her head. "You have nothing to be sorry for. I'm sorry for not being there for you."
"That wasn't your fault."
She looks as if she's about to refute my statement but then thinks better of it. "I still should have been there. As your mother, I should have been there. I'm going to help you, okay?"
I nod because I know that's the answer she wants. She doesn't want me to refuse her help. She doesn't want me to push her away. Right now she wants - no, she needs - me to cooperate with her, for her own sanity.
There's a slightly awkward pause after our embrace. Nobody knows what to say.
"What exactly did you force me to drink?" I question Demi.
"The glass contained a mixture of baking soda and water. The mug was just tea with milk and honey," she explains. "Did they help at all?"
I nod, and she offers a small smile.
The front door suddenly slams shut as Sara runs towards us, tears streaming down her cheeks. Before anybody can question her, the front door slams shut once again, and Sara turns around to face Preston.
"Leave me alone, Preston!" she shouts, her voice strangled due to her tears.
He shakes his head. "You're not thinking straight, Sara. You're confused. You don't know what you want."
"I know that I want you to leave. I know that you hit me. I know that your apologies mean absolutely nothing."
Nick places a hand on Preston's shoulder. "Why don't you just let her go and leave, man?"
Preston shrugs off Nick's shoulder. "I want you back, Sara. I want us back to the way we were before."
"Before you hit me?" She retorts, crossing her arms over her chest.
"How many times do I have to apologize for my actions?" Preston throws his hands up in the air, clearly frustrated.
Sara scoffs. "It's not about your empty apologies, Preston! How can I trust you after what you did?"
"I only hit you once!"
The room becomes so silent after that. I swear nobody is even breathing.
"Somebody please tell me that his dumbass self seriously did not just say that," Demi loudly breaks the silence, and I can't help but to laugh softly.
"Why is he still standing there?" Jordan murmurs to Dallas. "Shouldn't he be running?" Dallas bites her lower lip, trying to stifle her amusement.
"You honestly see nothing wrong with what you did?" Sara inquires, her tone wounded.
"What about you, huh? You always put the blame on someone else for every little thing that goes wrong in your life! I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you're not fucking perfect; in fact, you're from it."
"You really are a dumbass," I state, "if you can't see how fucking perfect she really is."
He directs his attention to me, an arrogant, amused smirk on his lips. "And who are you?"
"She's your replacement, baby," Sara snides, shocking me with her words.
Preston chuckles as if somebody just told him that his arrogance and ego aren't really all that attractive. "You're honestly going dyke now?" He trails his eyes over her body as if she's nothing more than his damn dream car, and I can feel my hands clench into fists. He clicks his tongue in distaste. "What a shame."
I jump to my feet, hands still clenched. "If you say one more thing about her, I will personally put you in the hospital."
His expression only grows more amused. "What are you going to do? Hit me? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth kind of thing?"
I hum affirmatively. "If you want to be literal about it, I'll be more than happy to find a very sharp butcher knife. Do you prefer one eye over the other?"
He chuckles again. "I hope that you can handle her. She really doesn't know how to shut the hell up sometimes." He shrugs. "You just have to teach her."
I swing at him with my right arm, successfully connecting my fist with his jaw. Veering my arm back, I hit him again, but in the cheek this time. When he collapses, I hover over him in a straddle position and continue to pound my fists into his face.
"Nick, why the hell aren't you stopping her?" Demi shrieks, referring to how Nick is the closest to me.
"The guy's an asshole, Dems."
I chuckle, continuing to inflict hit after hit until arms snake around my abdomen and pull me off of him. Judging by the black manicured nails and perfume, I realize that Demi is, in fact, the one dragging me away from Preston.
With the help of Nick, Preston is back on his feet, much too soon for my liking. His face is bruised and bloody, and I hope that both of his eyes will be swollen shut by morning.
"Consider yourself taught," I say to him as Nick leads him to the front door.
~
"I honestly believe that Bailey would have murdered him had Mom not stepped in," Jordan finishes explaining the events of today as all of us - Demi, Nick, Jordan, myself, Dallas, Sara, Dianna, Eddie, Madison, Kevin, Danielle, Alena, Joe, Frankie, Denise, and Paul Kevin Jonas Sr. - wait in line at the carnival for tickets. Damn, that's a lot of people. There are going to be so many pictures of us on the internet by tomorrow.
After we've all managed to collect our tickets and feel like zoo exhibits, everybody scatters. Alena joins a gaggle of her friends. Frankie leaves us to, I'm assuming, meetup with his girlfriend that he said was running late getting here. Kevin and Danielle explain that they're going to keep an eye on Alena from afar before ditching us. Eddie and Paul Kevin Jonas Sr. leave us to probably talk about golf or something boring like that. Dallas, Madison, and Joe decide to ride one of the thrill rides together - something that nobody else is up for just yet. Finally, Denise and Dianna drift away from us, and I can't help but to picture them sharing embarrassing stories about their kids to each other. For potential blackmail reasons, maybe I should join them...
"Looks like it's just us five," Demi announces.
"Oh, look, you can count," I distractedly chime, scanning through the dizzying array of rides, games, food booths, and people. "I want to play that," I inform, pointing towards a game where you have to throw darts at balloons and try to pop them.
"Of course you do." Demi chuckles as we all make our way to the game.
"Who's paying?" I inquire.
Nick jokingly sighs as he retrieves his wallet, as if doing so pains him. "Don't waste it," he dramatically adds, handing a twenty dollar bill to me.
I giggle, snatching the bill from his hand. "You act as if money doesn't practically grow on trees for you."
The man behind the counter passes me twenty darts. I line one dart up with a green balloon and throw it, frowning when it just barely skims the top. I try again with a blue balloon, succeeding it hitting nothing but the cork board that the balloons are tied onto.
"Try throwing it like an actual dart instead of a baseball," Sara supplies with a giggle. "You act as if you're trying to murder someone."
My eyebrows knit together in confusion. "Wasn't I throwing them correctly?"
Smiling, she shakes her head and approaches me.
"You were throwing them like this." She demonstrates an overhand toss. "Throw them like actual darts." I try again, this time aiming for a pink balloon, and miss. "Here. Let me help." She gently grips my right arm, bringing my hand closer to my chest. Her hand then moves upwards to overlap mine that holds the dart. "Ready?" I nod, and she guides our hands forward in one quick, jerking motion, successfully popping a red balloon.
After managing to pop seventeen balloons, I ask Sara, "which prizes do you want?"
"Why me?"
"You did help me win," I remind with a smirk.
She playfully rolls her eyes and stands beside me at the counter. Her eyes quickly scan the many prizes hanging around the booth. She seizes my arm upon noticing one of the poster walls.
"They have two Taylor posters," she softly squeals, and I chuckle at her excitement.
"One of each of the Taylor Swift posters, please," I tell the man behind the counter, who nods and retrieves them. "Eleven more points left to redeem."
"How many points for the monkey?" Sara wonders, pointing upwards towards a ball of pink fuzz whose arms are longer than the rest of its body.
I take a step back, reading the sign that hangs from the wire basket the so-called monkey is chilling in. "Ten."
"One of the monkeys up there, please," Sara instructs the guy.
"Pink or purple?" He holds one of each.
"Purple." Sara grins as she is handed the monkey. "And may I have one of the Nemos?" She questions, pointing to a cubby hole overflowing with stuffed clown fish that cost one point each.
We both thank the man, and Sara gives me her posters and her fish as she wraps the monkey's arms around her neck.
"How about I just carry all of your stuff?"
She eyes me suspiciously. "You're not being sarcastic?"
"Not at all," I truthfully state.
She grins and kisses my cheek, taking me by surprise so much so that I stop walking momentarily. Despite her blushing cheeks, she interlocks her fingers with mine, and, hand-in-hand, we walk around the carnival in search of my family, who left sometime during my game of darts.
~
"Okay, so, the last thing to do is the ferris wheel before they set off the fireworks," Demi informs.
Though I refuse to admit it, I'm actually really excited about riding the ferris wheel. Yeah, to most it seems like a dumb kind of thing to get excited over, but I've never rode on one before. Even though this is, in fact, my first carnival, I think that this is going to be one to remember.
"Can I stay on the ground?" Jordan inquires.
"Not a huge fan of heights?" Nick guesses.
"Not really," Jordan mumbles, eyes on the ground.
We fight through a crowd of people, and that's when I notice the group of guys - probably around my age or maybe even Sara's - laughing and talking loudly. One of the guys in particular catches my eye, for he is walking backwards like a complete dumbass. I mean, who walks backwards in a crowded place? Though, his friends might be even more idiotic for finding humor and entertainment in his supposed "skill".
"Dude, you're gonna fall," one of his friends predict, blaring laughter escaping his lips.
"I am not," the dumbass confidently reassures.
Before I can even blink, the guy is colliding into Jordan. She gasps as her red slush drink spills all over her white top.
"Shit, I am so sorry!" He hastily apologizes as the laughter from his friends seem to grow even louder.
"Dude, you seriously just spilled her drink all over her," a blonde boy states the obvious.
Their laughter abruptly ends, however, upon noticing Nick and Demi.
"Holy shit, man, you just bumped into Demi Lovato's daughter," a tan kid sporting an electric green mohawk gawps.
After Green Mohawk voices that revelation, the group of kids scatter, and the boy sighs.
"I'm really sorry," he emphasizes, his gaze quickly sliding past Jordan, towards Demi and Nick. "Holy fuck, you really are Demi Lovato's daughter."
Jordan giggles.
The boy fumbles over his words, failing to piece together one coherent sentence, as he shakily takes off his leather jacket and hands it to Jordan. I have to bite my lower lip to keep from laughing at his embarrassment.
"I don't need your jacket," Jordan insists, shaking her head and pushing the guy's hands away from her.
"But I ruined your shirt," he frowns, guilt evident in his tone, though it all might just be an act - with Jordan practically being a celebrity and all. "The least I can do is give you my jacket and buy you another drink," his gaze flickers to Demi and Nick once again, "if that's okay with you two, I mean," he hastily adds.
Jordan turns around to face Demi and Nick.
"That's fine," Demi reassures with a smile.
The kid hands Jordan his jacket, and she slips it on and zips it up. As if on cue, just as Jordan and The Boy With No Name start heading for one of the drink stands, Dallas shows up.
"Who's the cute boy that Jordan-"
"Follow them," Demi interrupts.
Dallas blinks at her. "What?"
"Follow them," Demi repeats, sternly emphasizing each word.
Dallas chuckles. "You can't be serious right now."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"Do you even realize how over-protective you can be sometimes?"
"Does it look like I really care?"
Though still wearing an amused smile, Dallas emits a sigh and follows after Jordan and No-Name.
~
"His name is Ryan," Jordan informs, taking a sip from her new red slush drink that Ryan bought for her.
A small, knowing smile plays on my lips as I eye his jacket still draped around Jordan's body.
"Where did Ryan go exactly?" Dallas wonders, a teasing smirk lighting up her face.
Jordan shrugs. "Parents wanted him home or something, but.." her eyes flicker to Nick and Demi before lowering to the ground; the rest of her sentence is nothing but inaudible mumbling, though I'm sure that I heard 'number' in there somewhere.
"He did what?" Demi sharply inquires, obviously having heard more than me and clearly not liking what she heard.
"He gave me his number," Jordan mumbles again, though more coherently this time.
With eyebrows raised, I look at Demi. "You're upset because of that? You're acting as if he raped her or something." Jordan's eyes widen at my words, and she awkwardly continues to sip from her straw. "You do realize that she's the innocent one, right?"
Demi rolls her eyes. "Compared to you, yes."
"At least you finally admit it."
"Demi," Nick interjects, "don't you think you might be overreacting just a tiny bit?"
She gapes at him. "Are you kidding? Of course I'm not overreacting."
"You don't think that you're treating Jordan any differently than Bailey?"
Demi defensively crosses her arms across her chest. "Bailey has seen and been through a lot more than Jordan, okay? Therefore, Jordan's a lot more gullible and naive than Bailey is."
"Wait, what?" Jordan stares at our mom, clearly taken aback, hurt evident in her tone. "How can you...how can you even say that, mom?"
"Because it's the truth. I love you, baby-girl, but you have a tendency of trusting people way too easily."
I inhale sharply, knowing that Demi has crossed some kind of line. Jordan wears an expression of annoyance and exasperation as she shakes her head.
"I am not naive, and I am not gullible. If you're worried about me not being able to take care of myself, don't even bother. If I've learned anything from you, it's that the people who hurt you the most are the ones that swore they never would."
With that, Jordan runs, disappearing within the huge, bustling crowd. Demi curses under her breath and begins to hurry after her, but Nick places a hand on her shoulder, halting her actions.
"I'll go after her," he says.
"I'm her mother. I should be the one looking for her."
I roll my eyes. "I think you've done pissed her off enough for one evening," I snide, and she glares at me.
"I'll find her," Nick insists, "and we'll meet ya'll at the ferris wheel." He kisses Demi's cheek and, before she can protest, heads off in the direction that Jordan ran.
~
~Nick's POV~
~
I'm pretty sure I've passed that stupid water shooter game at least a dozen times now.
Trying for a new plan, I stand in line at the ticket booth - also known as the middle of the carnival. Here, I can oversee everything as well as everyone who passes. Except, apparently, Jordan.
I scan the array of rides, wondering which one Jordan might be on.
What do teenagers do at a carnival when no parents are hovering over them?
Shaking my head at the answers I conjure up, I remind myself which teenager, in particular, I'm referring to.
What do innocent teenagers do at a carnival when no parents are hovering over them?
Emitting a groan, I step out of line and contemplate on whether or not I should just meet everyone else at the ferris wheel and allow Jordan to return on her own. I curse myself for even considering such a stupid idea.
Demi's words obviously upset Jordan. If I was upset in a public place, where would I retreat to?
With an idea in mind, I shove through the throng of people and make my way to the parking lot.
~
Just as suspected, I find Jordan in my car, curled up on the row of back seats. The bright glow of her phone illuminates her face. I softly tap against the window, causing her to jump slightly and look over at me. Sitting up, she reaches over and opens the door.
"What do you want?"
Her eyes are red, as is her nose, and her cheeks are tear-stained.
"Your mom didn't mean what she said," I softly speak.
Shaking her head, she looks away from me. "You're wrong. She meant every word." She turns so that she's facing me once again. "I just don't get it, you know? Sure, I haven't been through everything that Bailey has, but that doesn't make me stupid."
"She didn't say that you are stupid, Jordan."
"She might as well have." She pauses, worrying at her lower lip. "Am I really that stupid?"
Sighing, I climb into the car, claiming the small space between her and the open door.
"You're not stupid, Jordan."
"But she said-"
"I know what she said, and maybe she shouldn't have said that, but maybe you shouldn't allow her words to bring you down so easily."
"Aren't you supposed to be on her side?"
One side of my mouth quirks upwards. "Probably. You're not going to tell her, right?"
She giggles and shakes her head as I smile, relieved to have brought her happiness, even if only for a second.
Eventually, the light dies from her eyes, and her smile drops. Her gaze shifts to the glowing phone, and she scoops it up, clearing her throat as she hands it to me.
"They say that music is therapy, so I made some playlists. I just hope that Bailey doesn't mind me making them on her account." I scroll through the playlists, eyebrows raised in surprise at just how many she created. "I made one for Bailey and one for mom and-"
"You made one for your dad?" I blurt, noticing one that reads Wilmer, and I can't help but to wonder why she didn't title it 'dad' or something.
She nods. "I made one for him, and I made one about him. Well, about him and my mom."
"Is there one about me on here?" I tease.
"Maybe." She slyly grins and snatches the phone from my grip before I can even begin to scroll through the rest of the playlists.
"You are so not being fair right now."
She giggles again at my words as she scrambles out the other side door. Grumbling under my breath, I exit the car, slamming the door behind me.
"Your mom is going to kill me if I lose you!"
"You mean, if you lose me again?" She laughs, and I run after her.
~
~Bailey's POV~
~
433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡordsDp1uEk
"I can't believe we're stuck up here," I groan. "What are the odds?" Flickering my gaze to the right, I notice Sara gripping the safety bar rather tightly. "What's wrong?"433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡowjGtzZ9NS
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"We're stuck at the top of a ferris wheel, " she states the obvious, not looking at me. "What if we fall or the cart collapses? We're basically dead right now."433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzah2mVJJwf
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I struggle to not smile in amusement. "You're scared?"433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeMtK2nXqY7
433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtG7pnzz6BS
"More like terrified."433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡioVNMB8rSo
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I gently, as to not shake the tiny cart, wrap an arm around her tense form. "We're not going to die," I softly reassure.433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJKLEJ39OWh
433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUEVgiWHD9j
"You don't know that."433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa8hNkl9Wy8
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I ponder over the accuracy of her words. Though death by ferris wheel is highly unlikely, I'm assuming that we're not going to die. I know nothing. "Look," I direct, pointing across the glowing fairgrounds; people are laughing and smiling; the night is sparkling. "How can something so beautiful possibly be deadly?"433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMDrykdzrCs
433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTIUOyFGcRP
A loud, piercing, whistle-like sound causes Sara and I to look up just as red and blue fireworks intermingle to create a dazzling fountain against the purple sky. Though the display is pretty, I find my attention drifting towards Sara, and I watch as her face lights up brighter than the color of the fireworks reflected in her eyes. The pungent smell of gunpowder and smoke fuses with that of the fair-food stands below us, and a slight gray haze begins to cover the entire fairgrounds.
"You look bored." She smirks, turning to face me. "Are the fireworks not pretty enough for you?"
I shake my head. "Well, I mean, they are pretty," I correct myself, "but their beauty is mediocre compared to yours."
"For someone who has probably never read a stereotypical teen fiction, you sure are cliche." She smiles, the blush on her cheeks made just barely visible by the fireworks and the now dimmed fairground lights. Her smile, however, falters as she looks away from me. "I told you that I don't know what I want, but I," she takes a deep breath and locks eyes with me, "I really want to take back those words right now."
"They're yours to take. I'm sure as hell not going to try to stop you."
She chuckles before kissing me tentatively. A sudden thought has me gently pushing her away: what if she'll regret this later?
"Do you not want me to kiss you?" she wonders, hurt evident in her tone.
"Of course I want you to kiss me," I bluntly respond, too surprised by her question to even feel embarrassed by my blurted answer. "But I don't want you to regret doing so later."
She shakes her head. "I won't."
"You don't know what you want, remember?"
Her jaw clenches at my words, but I don't know if she's frustrated with me or herself. "I know exactly what I want," she insists.
In an instant, the space in between us is gone, and her lips are on mine. Unlike before, this kiss is almost feverish, driven completely by desire instead of thought. My arms wrap around her, bringing her closer - a feat that I deemed as almost impossible to do within the confinements of the tiny ferris wheel cart. The hem of my shirt has risen up slightly, and, when Sara gently pushes me against the cart, the metal safety bar sears my lower back.
The date was July 4, 2023, and it was my tenth year celebrating America's birthday, though I was only excited about seeing the fireworks and catching candy during the parade. My adoptive family had left early to watch the fireworks display, and they didn't want me to go with them, so Matthew volunteered to watch over me until they returned.
We were at a park, though not the one where the fireworks were held at, but I didn't know that. I just thought that the park was empty because, after all, it was in one of the more worse off sections within the city. I was currently climbing one of the metal jungle gyms, proud that I was almost at the top considering it was the largest one on the entire playground. My white cardigan - that Matthew said would look pretty with a white dress shoved in the back of my closet - was wrapped around my hands, protecting them from getting burned by the metal.
After reaching the top of the jungle gym and making my way back to the ground, I asked Matthew when we were going to watch the fireworks.
"You're really impatient today, aren't you, Hailey?" He chuckled as we walked to his car, and I shrugged, untangling my hands from my white cardigan, revealing blue and red stains from the two popsicles that Matthew gave me before we left the house.
"I just want to watch the fireworks," I grumbled as he opened the back door of his car, and I claimed the tiny middle seat, like always.
"What if we did something more fun than watching fireworks?"
"There's nothing more fun than watching fireworks," I defiantly insisted.
"Not even a fun game?"
Panic and fear washed over me immediately. I was used to Matthew's "games", sure, but I stupidly thought that today was going to be different just because he gave me popsicles and took me to the park. Running on flight response, I scrambled across the row of seats, trying to reach the other back door on the other side of the car. His hands curled around my ankles, dragging me across the seats and back towards him. By then, I was screaming and crying and trying to fight back, all of which did nothing to save me.
"I don't want to play a game! I don't want to play a game! I don't want to play a game!" With each exclamation, my voice grew more shrill, more desperate, more plagued by sobs.
"But it's a different game, Hailey," he tried to reason with me, "one that you've never played before." Though tears continued to glide down my cheeks, I stopped fighting. I was tired of fighting. "You might even really like this game," he continued.
"I don't want to play," I said, my voice now nothing more than a barely audible plea made up of syllables broken by soft sobs.
"Do you think that the other kids might want to play, then?"
"No." I knew that I couldn't let him play games with the other kids. I knew that, as the oldest, it was my responsibility to keep them safe. At ten years old, it was my responsibility to ensure that my sick uncle didn't molest the other kids, even if it meant becoming his target. "I'll play."
"So, you'll play a new game with me?" The eagerness in his tone made me feel sick, but I weakly nodded anyways. He continued to talk as he began removing his belt. "You're doing the right thing, Hailey. You playing this game with me will make me very happy, and you do want your uncle to be happy, right?" I nodded again, even though I would not have shed a tear had he dropped dead right then and there. "And you playing this game with me is only fair," he unbuttoned his jeans, and I cringed as he yanked his zipper pull down, "considering I gave you those two popsicles earlier and brought you here, to this empty park where you got the entire playground to yourself."
"It's only fair," I muttered for the sake of appeasement; I didn't believe a single word that came out of his mouth. Though I knew that I would have to open them soon enough, I squeezed my eyes shut as he took off his jeans and boxers. "How do I play?"
Leaning over the side of the ferris wheel cart, I involuntarily throw up, spewing out the contents of my stomach - including the popcorn and blue snow cone that I ate while waiting in one of the long-ass carnival lines - onto the fairground below.
"Let's hope that didn't land on anybody," I say half-heartedly.
"What the fuck?" Sara nearly screams. "Are you okay? No, of course you're not okay; you totally just threw up. Wait, why did you throw up? What just happened? What-" I clamp my hand over her mouth to silence her worried rambling.
"Did you just swear?"
She rolls her eyes, and I remove my hand from her face. "Don't sound so surprised. I really only do so when my emotions are on overdrive, and don't you dare think that you can change the subject so easily."
"I'm fine now."
"You spaced out on me, and you threw up."
"I'm fine now," I repeat, adding an indifferent shrug for emphasis.
"You literally just vomited," she enunciates each word clearly, as if doing so will help me understand.
"You literally don't understand this whole disordered eating thing, do you?" I mock her tone.
"Fine. How about I tell Demi and Nick to take you to the hospital because you're obviously sick?"
"How about I promise to tell Demi everything later, and how about you stop worrying so much?"
"Will you honestly confide in her?"
Well, she kind of is the reason why I'm no longer terrified of Matthew.
I mean, you can't be terrified of something that's buried six feet underground, right?
"Sure." I nod. "Why not?"
"Good," she pauses, "and you know that I'm here for you, too, right? If you ever need someone to talk to or whatever..."
"I-" The cart of the ferris wheel suddenly lurches forward, causing my words to die in my throat as I tightly grip the safety bar.
Sara emits a high-pitched shriek, and I can't help but to laugh at her as the ferris wheel begins its descent to return us to the ground.
"Why are you laughing? We could have died!"
"Would you rather still be stuck up there right now?" I retort, trying to calm my obnoxious laugh.
"I swear that I just saw all sixteen years of my life flash before my eyes."
"At least we'll be able to tell a story someday about how we got stuck at the top of a ferris wheel. I don't know about you, but I'll be sure to add that the ferris wheel caught on fire, and we bravely saved everybody while also barely escaping with our own lives."
She shakes her head at my narration. "Well, I don't know about you, but I'll be sure to add that I wouldn't have wanted to be stuck at the top of a ferris wheel with anybody else."
"Way to make me feel like a complete bitch."
She laughs; however, the melodic sound is drowned by the finale of the fireworks display.
~
As soon as we're off of the ferris wheel, Sara goes straight to Demi and whispers something in her ear. Demi glances at me and nods. What the hell did Sara tell her? Though I know that I should probably just start running in the opposite direction, even if it puts me at a risk for getting kidnapped, I approach the two.
"Thanks for saying that you'll always be there for me, and then selectively deciding when to be there for me," I hiss into Sara's ear. "It's such a reassurance."
She rolls her eyes. "All I did was make it easier for you to confide in Demi like you promised." She walks ahead of me, joining Dallas and Madison.
"Speaking of confiding in me," Demi slings an arm over my shoulders as we walk to the parking lot, "I want to take you somewhere."
"Sounds like a line the killer would use in a horror movie before stabbing the dumb girl."
"Did I mention that you don't have a choice on whether or not you go?"
"Can't you just kill me now and get it over with instead of leaving me in suspense?"
She stops walking and turns so that her eyes meet mine. "I'm serious, Bailey."
I sigh. "When?"
"Now."
"Now? Are you forgetting that we're supposed to be going to Kevin's?"
"We can go afterwards."
"Fine," I begrudgingly submit, "but at least take me somewhere with a lot of witnesses."
Before we leave, I manage to snag a piece of gum from Jordan as she rambles on about playlists or something. I am too busy glaring daggers at the back of Sara's head for me to even acknowledge my sister.
"Where are you and Bailey going?" I hear Nick ask, and I try to hear Demi's response, but she whispers it into his ear. "Really?" His eyebrows raise in surprise, and he quickly glances at me before returning his attention to Demi. "Are you going to tell her-"
"Yeah," Demi cuts him off with a nod.
"So, we're going to have a nice chat over tea before you kill me?" I interject. "Doesn't that seem like a lot of unnecessary work?"
Nick's eyebrows furrow in confusion, and Demi sighs. "Just get in the car, Bailey," she says.
"Will you be telling me good news or bad news?"
"What makes you think that I have any news to tell you?"
"Why else would you take me somewhere, away from everybody else, to talk to me?"
"I thought that I was supposed to be killing you?" she points out.
"It's bad news, isn't it?" I pause, pondering over worst case scenarios. "Holy shit, is somebody dying?"
"Somebody's dying?" Denise nearly shrieks.
"Nobody's dying!" Demi hastily reassures.
"So, it's good news, then?" I continue, contemplating over what the opposite of death would be. "Holy shit, did somebody get knocked up?"
"Wait, Dems, you're pregnant?" Dallas asks, an underlying squeal in her tone.
"How the hell do we go from somebody's pregnant to I'm pregnant?" Demi questions exasperatedly.
"Woah," Jordan speaks, looking up from her phone screen, "I seriously must have tuned an entire conversation out because I only heard two words."
"Oh, gee, I wonder which two words those could have been," Demi sarcastically chimes, and I have to refrain from laughing as she focuses her attention on me. "I'm going to wait in my car. If you're smart, you will follow me before some idiot overhears our conversation and gets the bright idea to sell bogus rumors to TMZ."
"She never did answer my question," Dallas mutters.
"Were you distracted because you were too busy texting Ryan?" I tease Jordan.
"No!" she scoffs, but her blushing cheeks say otherwise.
I chuckle at her embarrassment but decide to drop the subject because I don't want to upset her too much.
"Well," I glance at Demi's car behind me, failing to see anything through the tinted windows, "I think I'm going to make a run for it while I can."
"I bet you'll actually like where she's taking you," Nick pipes up.
"If that's the case, why am I considering hopping inside a stranger's car trunk to avoid going with her?"
"Oh, c'mon, Bailey," he chuckles slightly at my dramatics, "trust me, okay?"
"I think I'd have an easier time trusting TMZ right now."
Demi's car horn blares, startling me a bit. With an annoyed eyeroll, I stomp to her car, grumbling under my breath the entire way.
~
"Are we there yet?"
"I swear you've said that at least 100 times since we left the carnival."
"We did leave the carnival an hour ago."
"Then I guess it's a good thing that we're here now, right?"
As she parks the car, I take a look at my surroundings. "Demi?"
"Yeah?"
"We're at a fucking beach."
"So?"
I stare at her, trying to figure out if she's joking or not. "It's nighttime. The beach is closed," I speak slowly, as if I'm talking to a kid who is trying to learn how to pronounce certain sounds or something.
She shrugs one shoulder nonchalantly. "We'll just have to try not to get caught." She exits the car, and I follow after her with my jaw slack.
"You're insane!"
She looks back at me, a smirk on her lips. "Are you just now figuring that out?"
"Did you get drunk at the carnival or something?" I ask, and she laughs. "Because you're not acting like yourself."
"Depends on which version of myself you're referring to," she hums before turning around to fully face me. "Would it make you feel any better to know that I am one-hundred percent sober, and I used to come here a lot at night?"
"Did you ever get caught?" She shakes her head in response. "Why did you come here a lot at night?"
"You waste no time getting to the point, do you?" she rhetorically questions before sitting in the sand, just a few feet from the water.
I sit beside her, not even caring about the sand on my clothes. The sand is warm underneath the palm of my hands, and I curl my fingers into it.
"Are we just going to sit here, listening to the ocean or-"
"I came here a lot at night to think," she interrupts me.
"About what?"
She shrugs and bites her lower lip before emitting a heavy sigh. "There's a cliff," she points to the right of us, "further on down the beach. It's considered the most dangerous location on this entire beach because if you jump or fall off of it, you only have about a fifty percent chance of hitting water; the other fifty percent is basically instantaneous death by jagged rocks that surround the cliff." She pauses. "Your dad and I used to sit on the edge of that cliff, with our legs dangling over the rocks and the water, for hours."
"How did you even convince him to sit on that cliff with you?"
She softly chuckles. "Well, the first time that he joined me, I honestly thought that he was going to start crying," I grin in amusement at the thought of Nick, scared shitless, sitting on a cliff with Demi, "but we were both only, like, fifteen then, so he eventually became more comfortable with the idea as the following two years passed."
"Why did you two bother sitting on the cliff at all?"
"You mean, why did we go up there, constantly, for three years?" I nod, but her flushing cheeks has me smirking in amusement and quirking an eyebrow in silent questioning. "Whatever's going through your mind probably didn't happen."
"Then why the hell are you blushing?" I tease, light laughter escaping my lips.
"I'm starting to regret telling you all of this," she groans, placing her face in her palms.
"You've hardly told me anything yet."
She removes her face from her hands, but she refuses to look at me. "You know about my past drug use, right?"
"You and Nick used to go up there to get high?" I almost laugh. "I have so much potential blackmail right now."
She finally looks at me. "Just don't tell Jordan," she jokes. "She's my innocent child."
"So, was getting high on that cliff - no pun intended - an everyday occurrence for you two?"
"Oh my God, no!" She chuckles as if the thought is completely improbable. "We didn't even go up there everyday, and when we did, we usually just talked for hours." She pauses, and I can't help but to notice how, even with the moon reflected in her brown eyes, the light in her expression dies. "Sometimes, though, our days really fucking sucked, so we'd share a joint and sit in silence." She releases another heavy sigh. "There was one day in particular when I didn't want to be silent. I wanted to voice my pain. I wanted him to know how much I was hurting."
"How old were you?" I softly inquire, hoping that her response will help me picture it all better.
"Seventeen. We were both seventeen, and it was one of those rare days when we had no work responsibilities whatsoever, yet we both knew how crazy our schedules would be in the following months. I was feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by it all, and I was kind of frustrated with how easily your dad seemed to be keeping his head above water while I was basically killing myself in an attempt to cope. We had been up there for about an hour when I asked him if he had ever considered jumping off of the cliff. He shook his head and laughed, but he stopped laughing when he realized that I was serious."
"What happened?" I gently pry when she stops narrating, a faraway look in her eyes.
She stares at the ink-colored ocean, the moon reflected as a perfect circle within its waves. "I jumped." My eyes widen, and I almost gasp at her response. "I jumped, and I prayed that I would not hit the water. I don't remember what exactly was going through my mind at the time, and I don't remember my reasoning completely, but I do clearly remember feeling so worthless that I just knew the world would be better off without me. I told myself that I deserved to die for causing so much pain to my friends and to my family, and for burdening them with my existence."
A shiver wracks my body as I recall feeling the exact same way yesterday when I tried making a run for Dallas's car. "How did Nick react?"
She turns so that her eyes once again meet mine. "He jumped right after I did."
"But...he was scared of the cliff," I state confusedly.
She nods. "He helped me to shore, and I started screaming at him, demanding that he let me die. When I started fighting against him, he pinned my body to the sand, and the only way he could shut me up was by covering my mouth with his hand. Next thing I knew, he was crying. I had never seen him cry before, so it was kind of surprising, especially because he was crying over me."
"Right after you deemed yourself as nothing more than a worthless burden," I murmur, realizing then how much of a shock it would have been for her to see him crying over her trying to kill herself.
She nods again. "He told me that I shouldn't believe everything that people say, and he told me that I shouldn't believe everything I think. He said that I wasn't worthless, that his world would be so dull without me in it." A small smile lights up her solemn expression as she speaks her next words. "He declared that, without me, tomorrow wouldn't be worth the wait and yesterday wouldn't be worth remembering."
"What happened after that?"
"He took me to his car, turned the heat up as high as it would go, and held me while I completely broke down and sobbed for over an hour."
A silence follows her story, the only sound being that of the gentle waves. "I want someone to love me like that one day," I confess with burning cheeks.
"How's Sara?" She grins cheekily, and I glare at her.
"How many times do I have to tell you that there is nothing going on between us two?" I mutter, cheeks still flushed.
"It didn't look like nothing when you two were on that ferris wheel."
My jaw drops. "You were spying on me?"
"Sweetheart, you were stuck at the top of a damn ferris wheel. I had to make sure that you were okay. And, trust me, you seemed to be more than okay." I groan and place my face in my palms, much like she did earlier. "Your dad saw you, too, by the way." I groan again. "Seriously, though, you are way too young to be kissing her like that."
"You just admitted that you were smoking pot at my age." My words sound muffled due to my hands still shielding my blushing cheeks. "I don't want to hear it."
When I uncover my face, she is still grinning at me. "Bailey and Sara, sitting in a ferris wheel, K-I-S-S-"
"I swear I am the adult right now," I mutter before clenching one of my hands into fists and throwing sand at her.
She gasps as the sand hits her, and I laugh at her stunned expression. "Oh, you are so going to get it now, little girl." With that, she plops two handfuls of sand right on top of my head.
I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my jaw as sand trickles down my face and down my back. "I hate you right now."
"Love you, too, baby-girl." I try to brush some of the sand out of my hair with my hand, frowning at the disgusting amount of it all. "C'mere, Bailey," she says with a chuckle.
Still frowning, I sit closer to her, and she begins to comb her fingers through my hair in an attempt to rid it of so much sand. She hums an unfamiliar tune - shocking, I know - as she does so.
The long silence is broken, however, when she says, "Sara told me that you got sick on the ferris wheel." I tense. "What happened?"
I struggle to shrug nonchalantly. "One too many snow cones, I guess."
"You only ate one snow cone, Bailey."
"One too many bags of popcorn, then."
"Still only one."
"It was a big bag!" I defend, and she sighs.
"You don't have to tell me, but I would like to know what's bothering you. I want to keep you out of harm's way as much as possible, even if that means trying to protect you from yourself."
I sigh, hearing the slight plea in her tone. "I did promise Sara that I would tell you," I mumble.
"I'm not forcing you to."
"It shouldn't even bother me anymore." I sink my teeth into my lower lip. "I had a flashback about Matthew." It's her turn to tense. "Are you sure that you want to actually hear it?"
"I want to hear everything that you're comfortable telling me."
I exhale a heavy, slow breath. "It happened on the fourth of July, actually. I was ten. My family had left to go watch fireworks at the park, leaving me with Matthew. It was good at first; he gave me two of those red, white, and blue rocket popsicles, and then he took me to the park. I thought it was the park where the fireworks were being held at when, in reality, it was actually a park across town, and, obviously, it was completely deserted. I was just happy that I got the entire playground to myself. Looking back, I don't understand why I trusted him so much that day. I was used to him molesting me," I clear my throat as my voice wavers on those last two words, "so I shouldn't have trusted him so easily, but this year was different in the sense that he was actually taking me somewhere public. The year before, on the same day, we stayed home while my family celebrated; he didn't rape me that day, but he did want to go swimming, so he told me to get in the pool without a bathing suit on, and he soon joined me, also naked," my voice shakes again. "He stared at me for the longest time before -" I cut myself off, squeezing my eyes shut, as if to block out the memories; I try to focus on the sound of the ocean waves, the smell of the salty water mingling with Demi's perfume, anything but my own memories. "That was the first day he touched me." From behind closed eyelids, I can still recall his hands on me: the way that they ran down my sides and caressed my legs and cupped my non-existent breasts; he touched me as if I was some grown-ass woman who enjoyed that shit. A strangled sob escapes my lips just like it did that day when he slid his hand between my thighs and forced his fingers inside of me. "He touched me where no nine year old little girl should ever touched," I whimper, not even caring how pathetic I sound right now.
"Bailey, I want you to stop, okay? You don't have to tell me anymore."
I shake my head, despite wanting nothing more than to stop reliving what that sick bastard did to me. "I haven't even told you why I got sick on the ferris wheel. How am I supposed to move on from it all if I can't even voice what he did?"
Demi kisses my head and wraps her arms around me, bringing me closer to her, as if doing so will shield me from my own mind.
"Anyways, I guess I just thought that my tenth Fourth of July would be different from my ninth one, with him giving me the popsicles and taking me outside and everything. He let me run around on the playground for a while; I even had time to climb the largest jungle gym, which I was super proud about." I consider laughing at the priorities of my younger self, but it doesn't take me long to realize that I can't - that I'm incapable of doing so. Even when dead, Matthew somehow still manages to strip away my joy and innocence. "Then I asked him about the fireworks, and he said that he knew something we could do that was more fun than watching the fireworks display. When I told him that nothing was more fun than watching fireworks, he suggested that we play a game. By then, I knew what his games were, and I knew that they weren't fun. I tried to run, tried to get away from him, but he was stronger and heavier and always one step ahead of me." Sighing, I break out of Demi's embrace and stand. I walk closer to the water, to where a pile of pebbles and stones and other debris has washed upon shore. I gather a handful of the stones and face the ocean. "He told me that we were going to play a new game." I hurl a stone at the water, not trying to skip it, not trying to sink it. "He told me that I would like the new game, that it would make him happy, too." Another stone is thrown. "He said that if I played the new game with him, he wouldn't play it with the other kids." One more stone greets the water, and I clench the next one in my right fist, my hand trembling as I do so. "He took off his pants and his boxers, but he told me to keep my dress - the one that he picked out for me because he said it would look pretty - on." I throw the stone clenched in my fist. "I was confused because all of his other games involved me wearing nothing, but I sure as hell wasn't going to question him." With a frustrated scream turned choked sob, I throw the remaining handful of stones into the water and whirl around to face Demi. "He told me that the fucking popsicles were practice! He forced his dick into my mouth and said to pretend like it was a fucking popsicle!" I scrub at my cheeks, trying to prevent tears from falling, but eventually I give up and allow tears to stain my cheeks. Sobs wrack my body, making it hard to breathe, as if a heavy object is crushing my chest. I want to crumble into a heap on the ground, close my eyes, and never wake up. "It was awful," I whimper, then, seeing Demi nearly run to me, one word comes to mind, but I bite my tongue to prevent saying it, to prevent from sounding even more like some pathetic baby. However, as she grows closer and closer to me, the more necessary it feels to say it, as if doing so will protect me even more. "Mommy, it was awful. It was so awful!" I collapse into her arms as my sobs grow louder and more violent, nearly rendering me breathless. Despite the fact that my chest burns and my eyes ache, I can't seem to stop the onslaught of tears.
Somehow Demi manages to carry my shaking body away from the beach, up a couple of stairs, and towards a bench near the parking lots. If I wanted to, though, while sitting on the bench, I could curl my toes into the ground, past the thin, scarcely-planted strips of grass, and once again be touching sand. On the bench, I curl up against Demi's body, and she wraps her arms around me, rubbing circles into my back as I continue to drown in my own tears. I can't help but to wonder if you can cry yourself to death.
"Do you want to go back to the car now?" she murmurs after my sobs have reduced to nothing more than trickles down my cheeks.
Sniffling, I sit up, putting some distance between us, and shake my head. I scrub at my cheeks once again, despite knowing that doing so will not make them any less sticky or tear-stained. My eyes are sore and itchy and no doubt as red as the tip of the rocket popsicles that Matthew gave me four years ago.
"Him forcing me to do that to him," my voice sounds monotone, unfamiliar to my own ears, "wasn't even all of it." I look at Demi, just now noticing how red her eyes are, how glassy they are from her holding back tears. "Y'know, it wasn't until junior high when I learned exactly what he was forcing me to do to him. I mean, I knew that it hurt, and I knew that I couldn't tell anybody, but it wasn't until then that I learned the definition of sex, and it wasn't until then that I learned what the hell a blowjob was. What's really fucking ironic is here I was at twelve years old, learning definition for acts, really, that I had been forced to perform on this man for two years. After I learned what the hell a blowjob was, I instantly remembered that fourth of July when I was ten, and then it made sense why he told me to swallow, and then it made sense why I vomited afterwards. And then, as if that wasn't bad enough, he said that he would have to punish me because I clearly did not find pleasure in the sick shit that he was doing to me," I pause, allowing my breathing to slow down, yet not even knowing when it sped up in the first place. "As if forcing his dick inside my mouth wasn't bad enough for one day, he raped me in his car." I dig the toe of my sneaker into the sand near the bench, wondering how big of hole I would need to bury myself. "What really sucked is that I could just barely hear the fireworks from the other park over the noises he was making. You would have thought that the fireworks at our carnival would have triggered the flashback, right?" I shake my head at my own question, not even giving her time to respond before I'm talking again. "The safety bar on the ferris wheel was hot when I touched it. When he was raping me in his car, I tried so hard to find something else to focus on, something to help me forget. My hand brushed against one of the seat belts, and it was so fucking hot that I almost cried out. But then I guess I figured: why the hell not, and I clenched onto the hot seatbelt as he continued to rape me. The pain from the seat belt gave me something else to focus on; it acted as a distraction, and it kind of numbed me." I return my attention to Demi, who still hasn't shed one tear, though I know that she needs to. "Why aren't you crying?"
"You're the one that had to go through that. I'm the reason why you had to go through that. I don't deserve to cry."
Shaking my head, I wrap my arms around her. "You don't always have to be the strong one; you can cry now, mom."
~
~Demi's POV~
~
As I'm driving us to Kevin's house, my phone starts ringing, and I watch as Bailey fetches the device out of my purse.
"Bay?"
"Hm?" She looks up at me, her finger hovering over the green 'answer' option.
"My car can answer the phone for us."
"Seriously?" She looks around. "Does that mean it also has the potential to turn into a transformer and murder us in our sleep?"
"Sure. Why not?" I shake my head at her antics before pressing the answer button on my steering wheel. "Hello?"
"Demi's car is a demon," Bailey announces, "that's going to murder you in your sleep. You have twenty-four hours."
"Oh, how I wish that I was a wrong number right now," Nick says, chuckling from the other end of the line. "I called Kevin and told him that we wouldn't be going back to his house to celebrate."
My eyebrows furrow. "Why?"
"I figured that you wouldn't be up for much celebrating after sharing that story with Bailey."
Bailey and I glance at each other, knowing that we both shared more than Nick assumes. "Yeah, you're right," I admit. "Thanks, baby." I roll my eyes when Bailey emits a gagging sound. "What's your problem?"
"Can't you think of a better pet-name?" She asks. "When I hear 'babe' or 'baby', I think of that pig in that one movie. Not Charlotte's Web, but the other one."
"Wow, Demi," Nick jokingly tsks, "I call you 'love', but I get named after a pig. How is that fair?"
"You're not exactly British, dude," Bailey points out, and I can't help but to chuckle.
"I could just call you Nicholas," I continue the teasing. "That is your actual name after all."
"Watch it, Demetria."
"I love it when my sarcastic comments turn into actual conversations." Bailey proudly grins.
"Shut up, Hailey," Nick and I say in unison.
"That was just rude," Bailey feigns offense, shaking her head in mock disappointment.
"Okay, so, we don't go to Kevin's," I restate, trying to get our conversation back on track. "Is that all?"
"I need to stop by my house and get enough things for me to spend a couple of nights at Dallas's, just until Geoffrey says it's safe to move back in. Do you want me to take Jordan with me, drop her off at Dallas's, or wait until you get here?"
"You might as well just wait," I reply, turning into Dallas's driveway, "because we're here."
433Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6REFdJeg9A
"Hey, Bailey, do you want a Popsicle?" Jordan asks as soon as Bailey and I enter the house, and, judging by the half-eaten one in her right hand, I can infer that she's offering Bailey one of those red, white, and blue rocket Popsicles.
To my shock, Bailey throws back her head and laughs. causing Jordan, Nick, and even me to eye her curiously. How the hell can she laugh after what she told me? Her being sarcastic is one thing, but her laughing...
"Did I say something wrong?" Jordan wonders, her tone as confused as her expression.
Bailey shakes her head as her laughter calms down. "I'd love a Popsicle, Jordan." I watch as Jordan cautiously hands Bailey the unwrapped Popsicle in her left hand. "Thanks."
Jordan furrows her eyebrows at her sister as Bailey opens the Popsicle. "Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?"
Bailey chuckles. "Can't I be happy without getting questioned?"
"You're happy?" I blurt, wondering how she can possibly be happy when she was just bawling her eyes out not even two hours ago.
She grins at me and nods. "Yeah, I think that I am."
"Well, that's good," Jordan says, completely oblivious.
"Y'know, I haven't had one of these in, like, four years," Bailey comments, referring to her now unwrapped Popsicle, and I find myself holding my breath, though I'm not sure why.
"Really?" Jordan's eyebrows raise in surprise. "How come?" she takes a bite out of her popsicle.
Bailey shrugs, looking at her untouched Popsicle. "I guess I just figured that they weren't worth the mess." She returns her attention to Jordan. "When I was ten, I had this white cardigan thing that got stained from the red and blue colors on these kind of Popsicles, so I stopped eating them."
That's not why she stopped eating them. My stomach flips, and I swear for a second that I'm going to be sick.
"Why don't you come sit down?" Nick whispers in my ear. When the hell did he even get up from the couch? "You look kind of pale."
Nodding, I allow him to lead me to the living room, and he sits beside me on the couch.
"Maybe it's because you don't eat them fast enough," Jordan teases, referring to how Bailey still has yet to take a bite out of her Popsicle.
"Are you trying to teach me how to eat a Popsicle?" Bailey jokingly retorts.
"Well, so far, you're kind of failing."
Bailey shrugs again. "You know what they say," her gaze flickers to me for a split second, her brown eyes now suddenly dull, as if all of the light in them has vanished, and that's when I realize that she's not really happy at all, but she's damn sure good at pretending, "practice makes perfect." With that, she finally takes a bite from her Popsicle, and I swallow the bile that rises in my throat.
"Where are Sara and Dallas?" I practically have to force myself to ask Nick.
"Sara didn't have clothes to spend another night here, so Dallas had to take her home to grab a few things. She apparently has a toothbrush here, though."
I shake my head at how Dallas manages to ensure the kid a toothbrush but not clothes. "Why didn't Dallas just grab something when she took Sara home before the carnival?"
"You do realize that we're talking about Dallas here, right?"
"Forgetful Dallas with her screwed up priorities," I chuckle, "but we love her anyways." My phone rings, and I fish it out of my purse, furrowing my eyebrows at the caller I.D.
"Who is it?" Nick wonders.
"Geoffrey," I respond before tapping answer. "Hello?"
"I have good news," he immediately states, and I can hear the grin in his tone.
"Good news?" I flicker my gaze to Nick, a small smile on my face, though I remind myself to not get my hopes up. "Can I put you on speaker?"
"Of course."
I tap the speakerphone option on my phone, and hold the device in front of Nick and me. "What's the good news, Geoffrey?"
"I just received word from LAPD that Wilmer has been located, and the police are on their way now to that location to apprehend him."
My jaw falls slack, and I nearly drop my phone. Did I seriously just hear him correctly?
"You're serious?" Nick questions, interlacing his fingers with mine.
"Yes," Geoffrey chuckles, "I'm completely serious."
"So we're safe now?" I ask, no longer able to suppress a grin.
"You're safe now," he confirms.
"It's all over?" Tears sting my eyes, and I tighten my grip on Nick's hand, anxiously waiting for Geoffrey's response.
"It's all over." I can't help but to emit a grateful, relieved sob. "Congratulations, Demi."
"Thank you. Thank you so much."
"Happy Fourth of July, you two." With that, he ends the call, leaving Nick and me to sit in a stunned silence with our hands still interlocked.
"It's all over," I echo, still not believing it. I look at Nick, my grin only widening to mimic his. "It's all over, baby!" I kiss him.
We only separate when the front door shuts. "What the hell did I miss?" Dallas wonders. "Why are you crying? Why does Jordan look like she's about to cry?"
"The police - they found Wilmer. They're going to arrest him."
Her expression is one of shock, then ecstatic, then she masks her emotions. "You're happy about that, right?" She speaks cautiously.
"Yeah," I nod, "and I don't even care how awful that makes me sound." She squeals, and I giggle as she hugs me.
"I think everyone has forgotten that we're still here," Bailey interjects.
"You actually want to be hugged?"
"You know what? I have suddenly turned invisible, but thanks for the offer."
Chuckling, I rise to my feet and approach my daughters.
"Jordan, what are you thinking?" I softly ask.
"Are you happy?"
I shake my head slightly. "I didn't ask-"
"Are you happy?" She repeats.
"Yeah. I'm really happy."
"That's all that I've ever wanted." She finally smiles, diminishing my doubts. "We're safe now, mom." Grinning, I pick her up and twirl her around like I used to do when she was younger. "Put me down!" She shrieks through laughter. "Feet belong on the floor!"
Giggling, I return Jordan to the floor, then I approach Bailey. "I know you're not going to believe me," I begin, "but I want you to listen, okay?" She nods, though her expression is confused. "I want you to stop blaming yourself, and I want you to stop carrying around so much unnecessary guilt. You think that you're the cause of so much pain when, in reality, you couldn't be further from the truth. Baby-girl, I need you to realize that you entering my life again is a blessing, even if I didn't realize it at the time. Bailey, you reunited me with your dad, you gave me the courage to leave Wilmer, and, well, you're pretty damn special, too, I suppose," I tease, and she smiles, but her smile vanishes as quickly as it appears. "I just need you to try to believe me, okay?" She silently nods again, and I wrap my arms around her, hugging her like I should have been doing everyday for the past fourteen years.
After my hug with Bailey, I walk to Sara, and immediately hug her.
"Why am I getting a hug?" She laughs.
"You're making my daughter happy," I whisper into her ear before releasing her.
She stares at me, eyes-wide. "Really?" She squeaks.
"Don't sound so surprised." I smile at her. "Thank you."
She shrugs. "Don't make it sound as if I'm going somewhere anytime soon."
"I hope not." I turn to Dallas. "You don't get another hug." I laugh.
"But you'll probably go right to Nick and kiss him again."
I feign a gasp. "Am I really that predictable?" Finally, I stand in front of Nick, looking up at him slightly. I grasp both of his hands and interlock our fingers. "Have I ever told you how much I really fucking love you?"
Chuckling, he shakes his head, feigning a thinking expression. "You know, now that I think about it, I don't believe you have."
"Well," I hum in amusement, "I really fucking love you. Do you think you'd ever get tired of hearing that?"
"Never." He kisses me, and I wrap my arms around his neck as his arms snake around my waist.
"Why did Bailey go upstairs?" I hear Dallas wonder.
"I'm back," I hear my eldest daughter announce. "Bloody Hell, you two, you have to come up for air eventually."
I break my embrace with Nick, though his arms remain around my waist, and look at our daughter. "Did you just say 'Bloody Hell'?"
She shrugs. "I was trying out the whole British thing that Nick has going on. It's not as fun."
It is then that I notice her hands are tucked behind her back. "What's behind your back, Bailey?"
"I think we should go get some fireworks," she says, placing my old wedding ring onto the coffee table. "I was serious when I said we should blow it up."
I pick up the expensive diamond ring. "Such a shame that something so expensive fostered so many empty promises," I murmur, watching as each diamond sparkles underneath the light. I look at Bailey. "I'll let you blow this up-"
"Yes!"
"if," she frowns, "you," I return my attention to Nick, "promise me something."
"What do you want me to promise you?"
"Well, this ring," I twirl the wedding band around the tip of my index finger, "is obviously worthless to me now, so I want you to give me something that's worth having and that's worth fighting for."
His eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets, and I swear he almost chokes on his own spit. I have to bite my lower lip to keep from laughing. "Are you honestly saying what I think you're saying, or am I reading too much into this conversation?"
Grinning, I playfully roll my eyes and stand on the tips of my toes. With my body flush against his so that I don't fall on my face, I softly sing into his ear, "hey, baby, I think I wanna marry you."
"That's the only line I know from that song," I hear Bailey mutter, and Jordan shushes her.
Nick smirks at me. "You found the ring, didn't you?"
"You never were good at hiding things."
Bailey approaches us from the side. "Oh, uh, you might need this in ten seconds," she says, slipping the velvet box inside Nick's coat pocket before flashing me an innocent grin and returning to Jordan.
Though I've seen the ring, and though I'm the practically demanding that he marry me, my heart rate still speeds up when I see his hand slip inside the coat pocket holding the ring.
"Are you sure that you want to do this?" He asks. "You're not going to look back and regret this?"
I shake my head. "Never."
Nodding, he retrieves the box out of his pocket and gets down on one knee. "Demetria Devonne Lovato," I roll my eyes at the use of my full name, and he chuckles, "with this ring, I promise to stand proudly with you and by you always, giving you all of the love, happiness, and respect that you deserve, and I promise to do the same by our kids. With this ring, I am promising to never let you go again because that would make me stupid as hell." I can't help but to giggle. "When I saw you for the very first time, back when we were fourteen, I knew that I had just laid my eyes on the most perfect girl in the entire world. I fell in love with that girl because I thought she was perfect, but then four years had come and come around, and I realized that you weren't so perfect afterall, which only made me fall in love with you even more. You're the strongest person I know, Demi, and I've always admired you because of that. Despite all of the shit that you've been through, you've never ceased to leave a trail of color through through this monochrome world. Your laugh is so infectious, and your smile - I can't wait to wake up to your smiling face every morning. I love you, Demi, and I..." He trails off, seemingly at a loss for words.
"You have the rest of our life together to tell me everything that you think I need to hear, but for right now," I grip his forearm, gently pulling him to his feet, "you should just kiss me because not only am I saying yes, but I'm saying fuck yes." We kiss, finally showing the meaning behind our words instead of just telling. He slides the ring onto my left hand, and I deepen the kiss.
"There are children here, you two," Dallas teases, causing Nick and I to separate.
"Yeah," Bailey interjects, "how could you two possibly forget about Jordan?"
"Why are you so rude to me?" Jordan feigns a pout.
"You'll survive."
Glancing at Nick I ask, "do you even realize what you're getting yourself into?"
He chuckles. "I do," he quickly kisses my lips, "and I wouldn't change it for anything."
~
"Remind me again why I can't go with you to get the fireworks?" Bailey questions Nick.
"Because I'm afraid you'll pick up the entire display and run with it."
"I'm not that stupid," Bailey scoffs. "You take the display to the bathroom, unwrap each individual firework so the alarms don't beep, and then run with them."
"This is exactly why you're staying here." Nick chuckles and grabs his car keys off of the counter.
"But blowing up her old ring was my idea," Bailey points out.
"So," I interject, "you're going to get the fireworks, come back here so we can light them and blow up my old wedding ring, and then do you think we can manage to get all of our stuff out of here before it gets much later, or are you just going to get some clothes from your house and spend another night here?"
"Wouldn't it make more sense to just stay here for another night? I mean, I know Wilmer's not a threat anymore but-"
"You two are kind of already sounding like a married couple," Bailey chimes, and I roll my eyes.
"Love you," I say to Nick as he's heading out the front door.
"Love you, too." He smiles at me before shutting the door behind him.
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An hour later, Nick still hasn't returned, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a tiny bit concerned.
"Mom," Jordan says from the dining room table, noticing my fidgeting, "I'm sure that Nick's fine. The police got Dad, remember?"
"I wasn't thinking that," I insist, waving off her concern.
She hums incredulously before resuming the music on her phone; she's still trying to learn every single Taylor Swift song known to man.
"I'm going to go see if Bailey and Sara are finally done watching that stupid horror movie." I chuckle as her footsteps retreat up the stairs; she hates horror movies with a passion even though I, like Bailey apparently, am obsessed with them.
I sigh when I still hear music, realizing that she left her phone on the table, yet knowing that she'll be back down here in ten minutes, tops, looking for it.
You have a way of coming easily to me, and when you take, you take the very best of me...
I stand in the kitchen, leaning against the center island with my back to the doorway, watching the clock and stirring sugar into a mug of coffee, the same mug that I've been stirring sugar into for over five minutes now.
It is then that I hear a car pull into the driveway, and I breathe a sigh of relief before tossing my spoon into the sink and taking a sip of the now lukewarm coffee.
"You were just being irrational," I mumble to myself, willing my heart rate to slow, willing the lump in my throat to dissipate.
Oh, what a shame, what a rainy ending given to a perfect day...
I hear the front door open and Nick's footsteps coming my way.
"Did you have fun getting Bailey's fireworks?" I chuckle upon hearing him place a plastic bag on the counter. "Dallas has been moving everything around in the backyard 'cause she thinks that we might actually catch something on fire, but I think she's just being a bit paranoid."
From behind me, he places his hands on my shoulders and kneads the tips of his fingers into my skin.
"What the hell are you doing?" I giggle, leaning into his touch.
You never did give a damn thing, honey, but I cried, cried for you...
Before I can even blink, a flash of silver is at my throat, hovering just over the incision that Matthew made.
I force myself to blink back tears as fear nearly paralyzes me. "Nick, what the hell are you doing?"
"You always were so gullible, love," he murmurs in my ear before dragging the knife across my skin, causing me to cry out from the pain of him creating a longer, deeper cut than what Matthew inflicted.
And I know you wouldn't have told nobody if I died, died for you, died for you...
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