“But then Grammy gave me cookies and I felt all better.” Nicolette finished, wrapping up her story on how she had fallen off a bike while riding around the block.

“Grammy makes the best cookies, doesn’t she?” Niall grinned into the camera. Colette nodded, giving the camera thumbs up.

I could see Nate sitting in the corner of the room from the camera, coloring it a jumbo coloring book.

“Hey, Nate,” I called. He looked up, smiling lightly.

“Hi, mum.”

“Want to come talk to daddy and I?” I cooed, really wanting to see his beautiful little face more clearly.

“Nah,” he shook his head. “I’m okay.”

“Let him be,” Niall sighed from beside me. “He’s happy.”

“What?” Colette yelled suddenly, directing her head towards the doorway of the room they were in. “Oh. Kay, grammy!”

“Grammy’s calling us to eat dinner.” She informed, licking her lips. “Bye mum. Bye daddy.”

“Bye, babe.” Niall waved, blowing her a kiss. Nicolette blew him one back, before running out of the room. I remembered the day Niall had taught Nicolette how to blow a kiss. It was such an adorable moment.

The camera was still on and Nate stood up, brushing his pants before closing his book and setting it ok the table neatly. He walked over to the camera and kissed it.

“Bye daddy. Bye mum.” He waved shyly. Ah, there was his beautiful face.

“Bye, baby,” I smiled, kissing the camera on my laptop.

“Bye, buddy.” Niall waved, giving Nate an air fist pump. Nate laughed, fist pumping him back. When Nate ended the call, I turned away and sighed.

“I miss them.”

Niall closed the laptop and put it on the side table, readjusting his glasses and wrapping his arms around me.

“I miss them, too.”

“They just make me so happy, but I’d be even happier if they were in my arms.”

“I don’t make you happy?” Niall pouted, frowning slightly. I smiled, kissing his lips before pulling away and closing my eyes for a second.

“You do. Of course you do.”

“Yay!” Niall grinned, hugging me tighter.

“So, we should probably go visit my father’s place today,” I said, staring into Niall’s two pools of blue.

“We should,” Niall agreed, “even though I don’t want to.”

‘Why not?”

“It’s just ,that place brings so much misery to you,” he sighed, plying with my fingers. “I don’t like to see you hurt.”

“But it’s still my home.”

“I know it is.”

The room was incredibly silent after that. If only things weren’t so complicated. Maybe the agency shouldn’t have even called me. They should’ve just sold the treacherous place. I wouldn’t be away from my kids then, or have had to see Niall flirt with some waitress. But I guess it was too late for that.

A hour later, Niall and I had pulled up in front of a large, worn down apartment complex. The sight of the area freaked me out. IT was like no one had lived here for fifty years. There were vines growing along the apartment walls, and the paint of the bricks was almost completely gone. I gripped tighter onto Niall’s hand as we headed towards the stairs.


Niall’s P.O.V.

This was gave me the creeps. I can’t believe Aria actually lived here. Her hand was cold in mine, so I gripped it tighter to let her know I was there for her. She was shivering. She led me to a door marked “347” and shuddered.

“This is it,” she sighed. The paint on the particular door was chipping off. There was a pot knocked over, with dead soil seeping out. Aria pulled the key out of her pocket and unlocked the door, pushing it open.

It smelled like beer.

“Nasty,” I spat, holding her hand as I walked in front of her. There were empty beer bottle all over the floor, literally covering it. Cigarettes and ripped up magazines were thrown carelessly on the sofas and the floor. Aria and I stepped over the bottles, making our way into the kitchen.
Empty pots and pans were piled up in the sink. They smelled off trash.

“Oh my god.” Aria whispered, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“You okay?” I asked her softly as we stared at the disastrous place.

She nodded weakly and pulled me down a narrow hallway. At the end of the hallway was a room. It was painted blue and had pictures of Coldplay and The Fray hanging on the walls. It smelled so much better. It smelled like Aria.

“This is my room,” she gulped, looking around. She glanced at one spot on the floor, the quickly looked away. In that spot on the floor, was a large blood stain.

“Is that…” I was at loss for words.

“My blood,” she nodded, choking up. “From when he rap-“

“Okay, s-stop,” I stammered, not wanting to hear it. I didn’t want to hear about any man touching my girl. Especially a man as disgusting as him.

The bedspread was blue and purple, with fluffy looking pillows sprawled across it. On the bed was a leather book, covered with small pictures of younger looking Aria and an unfamiliar brunette.

“What’s this?” I asked, walking over to the bed.

“No don’t!” Aria yelled suddenly, sprinting towards the bed and grabbing the journal away from my reach. She held it in her shaking hands before tears filled her eyes. The journal fell from her hands and landed on the floor.

“What was that, princess?” I frowned, trying to get a better look at the pictures.

“I didn’t think he would find it,” she whispered softly, talking to herself. “But he found it.”

“Who? Who found what?”

“My father,” she whimpered. “He found Scar’s journal.”

“Scar? Is that like, a guy or something?”

“Scar. Scarlett.” Aria sobbed quietly. “My sister.”

Oh.

Aria bent down and picked up the book, sitting down on her bed. She stared at it, her hands still trembling.

“He touched it. The only thing between Scar and I. He touched it.” She mumbled, wiping away tears. “I can’t believe he touched it. I told him not to and I hid it. I did everything and he still found it.”

“Princess,” I begged, trying to make sense of all this. “What is in the book?”

“Scrapbook,” Aria corrected, opening it as if it were the most fragile thing in the world. “Scar and I…we made it.”

Well, that makes sense.

“What’s inside it?” I asked .Aria looked up at me with a scowl, as if to say “duh?”, but quickly sighed when she realized her rude gesture. I understood. She was obviously pissed that her disgusting excuse of a father had touched such an important thing to her.

“Pictures.” Aria answered. “Not with just Scar and I. With my mum, too. After Scar died, I snuck into her room and found loads of pictures in the one drawer she always told me never to touch. I don’t know why but I feel like the pictures were the only thing that kept her holding on to me, after mum left.”

I sat down beside Aria, setting an arm around her waist instinctively.

“Which parts did you two make together?”

“We mostly took selfies of ourselves and printed them out.” She laughed ever so lightly, sniffling. She flipped through the first few pages and showed me the pictures they had taken together. Scarlett was a very beautiful girl, much like Aria. They both had the same blue eyes and dark eyebrows, but Scarlett’s hair was dark brown while Aria’s was blonde.

“The brown hair came from my dad,” Aria explained, reading my mind. “And the blonde, I got from my mother.”

I could see the pain written across her face as she talked about her dead family. We never really touched the topic of her family, but one night, she had cried for hours when Colette asked where her mother was after she and Nate had visited my mother.

Aria flipped through the pages and pages of endless pictures, but stopped at one that made her freeze altogether.

It was a picture of her, Scarlett, and both her parents, sitting in the grass. They looked like they were on a picnic, a family picnic. They all looked so incredibly happy; it would be so hard to believe what a broken family they eventually became.

“It’s the only picture in here of us as a family.” Aria choked, running her fingers lightly over the picture. “My father didn’t like pictures very much, and for some reason, Scarlett didn’t really want him in our scrapbook. After, I found out it was because she knew he beat my mother. She hated him for it.”

“So did you have to beg her to put it in the scrapbook, then?”

Aria nodded. “I pleaded her for at least one picture of my father, without knowing what or who he really was. She was so pissed, but I guess I annoyed her too much, so she agreed to let me put a picture of him in here.”

I laughed lightly, imagining a little Aria on her knees begging for Scarlett to put a picture into a book.
As we continued going through the pictures, there came two pages facing each other, with many pictures of Scarlett at a young age, and a boy beside her. On the right face page were pictures of Scarlett and a guy kissing, along with Scarlett and the same guy smiling and standing together.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the guy.

“That was Scarlett’s boyfriend.” Aria answered. “His name’s Jace.”

“Really…”

“Him and Scarlett were the definition of love. They were the best of friends. The actually met each other in second grade I think, and then they didn’t talk for a while. But then in high school, I remember he started coming over more often, and he’d make cookies with me. He was kind of like my brother.”

“These pictures definitely show their love.” I smiled, thinking about Aria and I.

“My parents hated him.”

I turned to her, shocked. “Why would they hate him if he was such a nice guy?”

“They thought he would break Scarlett’s heart. When Jace got a tattoo, and I swear, it was just one tattoo, my parents freaked out and I was really little, but I remember Scar and my mum would have fights about Jace.”

“Did you parents know how much she loved him?”

“They did,” Aria nodded. “And that’s what they hated most.”

“Wait, are these all the same guy?” I asked, examining the pictures. “I mean, in some the guy has brown ahir and in the other he has blonde hair.”

Aria smiled. “Long story short, Jace liked to experiment with his hair. My parents thought he was hair crazed and would dye his hair purple or some other ridiculous color, but he never did. He just liked to change from blonde and brown, and sometimes the style.”

After going through the pictures, Aria had seemed to calm down. Once she had closed the scrapbook, she put it in a drawer and closed it, before taking my hand and pulling me off the bed.

“I want to go into Scar’s room.” She said softly, her pupils blown out. She was nervous.

“Are you alright?” I asked when her hands began to shake again.

“I just haven’t been in there ever since that time I took the pictures from her room. IT’s been a while.”

“I’ll be right beside you, babe.” I kissed her forehead and she lead us to a room right next to hers.

It was bigger and Aria’s room, and there were many rock band posters covering the walls. The walls were painted a grayish color, and the bedspread had a very unfamiliar rock band on it.

“This is Scar’s room.” Aria sighed, grimacing. “It still smells like her body spray.”

Indeed, it smelled like cherry and vanilla mixed together with an extra touch of sugar. It smelled good.

“Jace loved that body spray.” Arai laughed, tearing up. “I loved that body spray.”

“Smells great, that’s for sure.” I grinned, sniffing the air of Scar’s room.

“I wish she hadn’t been in a car that night,” Aria sighed, leaning against the door. “Maybe she’d still be alive now.”

“But…didn’t you say she was kind of…messed up?”

Aria nodded, looking straight at me. “But not on the inside. It was just a teenage phase.”

“I understand.” I nodded, taking her hand again.

“So, do you think you’re going to sell this place any time soon?” I asked, taking her other hand into my free one.

“I don’t know,” she exhaled, looking around Scarlett’s room. “This place just holds so many memories. As much bad memories as there are, there are also the good ones.”

There’s my girl. The optimistic person I knew she was.

“It’s your choice, princess,” I smiled, stroking her cheek. I ran my thumb over a scar her father had given her way back when, pulling her closer.

“Sometimes I wish I still had my family.” She cried softly into my chest, her arms draped around my neck.

“But you do have a family,” I pointed out. “You’ve got me, and Nate, Colette, Greg, Noah, my mum…”

“If only I had Scar with me too. And my mum.”

“I know, baby.” I sighed, hugging her as tight as I could. Her body seemed so weak as she talked about her family, which is probably why she never did talk about them. They made her vulnerable and weak, which was not how my princess liked to be seen. Aria wanted to give people the image that she was strong and confident, but anyone who knew her well enough, like me, knew she was so different from that.

But she was still my little princess.

“I’m going to go get the scrapbook,” Aria sighed, letting go. “I’ll be right back.”

I nodded and watched her exit the room, then turned back towards Scar’s room and began to walk around. I picked up a small picture frame with Scar and Aria standing together, grinning with melting ice cream cones in their hand. In other picture frame was a photo of Scarlett and Jace. They looked so happy together, and it must have sucked for Scarlett that her parents hated her boyfriend. I wondered where he was now, what he did after he discovered Scar was dead.

Aria walked back in, holding the scrapbook in her hand.

“Can we go now?” she asked, her eyes pleading. “I think I’ve had enough of this place for one day.”

“Of course, princess,” I said, walking over to her. Slipping my fingers through hers, I walked her down to the front door, back through the piles of beer bottles. Once we had stepped outside the apartment, Aria locked the door and together we headed back to our car.



Aria’s P.O.V.

I sat on the bed of the hotel room, going through hall the pictures of Scar and I when we were younger. I thought back to the day when Amber had blamed Scarlett’s death on me, and I wondered if it were true. I couldn’t have killed Scarlett. I was only six when she was discovered dead. There was no way.

Pages and pages, pictures and pictures, when I finally neared the end of the book. Niall was on his phone texting one of the boys about their next studio day. He seemed to be laughing at something one of the boys had said.

I turned back to the book, running my fingers over each and every picture. When I reached the last page, I sighed. We should have added more pictures. We could have, if Scar was still alive.
I was about the close the book, when I noticed small bold writing at the left corner of the page.

Ri, I’m glad you found this. And I’m not dead.

­I only knew one person who ever called me Ri.

Scarlett.

Notes

Pictures Of Scarlett and Jace: