The Love Album Series: Ride -BWWM- (SLOW UPDATES)

45

-I'm Every Woman by Whitney Houston-

By the time Adeline returned, Samantha and Denise found another question.

While Denise drank her water, Samantha asked:

"'Denise, how many children would you like to have? Also, have you guys ever thought about taking a road trip together or just a ladies' trip and filming it'?"

"Three or four kids at least," Denise answered, closing her water bottle.

Adeline sets it on the floor for her.

"As far as a trip goes," she looked between her sisters. "We should take a trip. Try to do one before I can't see my feet anymore."

Samantha gasped, "we should go to -"

"Ibiza!" they say in unison, excitedly.

"Short storytime," Denise explained. "We've been obsessed with Money Heist on Netflix. One of the characters, Nairobi, wanted to have a baby, and she wanted to name her Ibiza. And every since then, we've just wanted to go to Ibiza."

"For weeks, that's all we talked about," Adeline added.

"And we kept looking up the island, and hotels, and food. We'd spend hours on the phone just talking about things we could do. But of course, life happens, gets busy -" explained Sam. "But we should definitely plan and go through with it soon."

"I agree," Denise was already looking for their next question. "This one is for Adeline," she smiles at her sister-in-law. "'How did you find Mark and I's channel, and what do you think?'"

"I'm surprised we never talked about this," Addy recalled the memory in her mind. "Ironically, you guys had become a hit at work. And when I say hit, I mean, there were a group of women who looked forward to their break, so they could watch your videos together. I ended up watching a video with them, and it was of Mark answering questions about his prison experience. I was like, 'oh my god' that's my little brother."

"Not so little anymore," Samantha remembered watching a video of him, having not seen him in years.

"Yeah, right," Addy chuckled. "Of course, I told the family. We all just started binging together and individually. Your guys' transparency really pulled me in. That's what I loved about you, immediately. Most people on the internet show this unrealistic view of who they are but not you and Mark. Even being older and married with kids, I thought about the in-depth conversations you guys had. Conversations that I've never had the guts to talk about it."

"Yeah, when the family started watching your videos, everybody started airing out their pain, I kid you not," Samantha shook her head.

"Wow," Denise listened attentively.

"You have to understand that when Mark went to prison, the family just kind of shut down. We never really talked about it. Everybody kind of just handled it in their own way. So, then we started doing that about everything that happens. Just don't talk about it. Avoid it because it makes it less surreal - or that's what we convince ourselves."

"But for a couple of months, it was a pretty dark time. We just started being transparent as a family about our pain. How it felt when we had to watch our little brother get sent to prison. There was some resentment toward our parents because they never really showed their anger like Addy and I did. To us, their lack of anger was a symbolization that they were okay and at peace with what happened."

"What we hadn't known." Addy took over, her eyes watering, "is that Mark going to prison almost made our parents divorce. They weren't even sleeping in the same bed for over a year. Dad felt like a failure as a father, so he was battling with that and suicide. Mom was depressed, and it was just - a lot we didn't know that they went through too."