No Shame (Book 2 - No Regrets)

Chapter Fifty-Four - Solemnly Swear

ARIA'S POV

THREE YEARS AGO
August 2014

   Everyday feels more suffocating than the last, each passing day the world's color fades further to gray. I shouldn't be here. Everyday, I battle the urge to take everything of value from the house and escape across state lines. Make a new identify and life for myself.

However, I am bound to this hell by chains far stronger than ever before. Nothing is really whole here, everything inside of everyone is broken.

Things weren't always broken. January 17, 1998, things weren't broken yet. They wouldn't break for a while.

  In my earliest memories, I had a loving and kind mother who never got impatient with me. I had a doting father whose arms I would snuggle into as he read books to me every evening. I had an older sister who adored me, who never ran too far ahead when we played,  even when my tiny legs made me slower than a turtle.

Then, everything began to crack, one by one, they all changed. My mother  would snap at me if I stuttered too much or the story I was telling her went on too long. My father would push me away every time I got too close. My older sister never could stand to be around me too long, she was always gone somewhere else even when she was physically still with me.

  Eventually, my mother found more reasons to be displeased with me. Slaps across the face and objects hurled across the room were added on top of the tongue lashings. Eventually, my interactions with my father only occurred when he initiated them, and he rarely did. Eventually, my older sister and I became more strangers than family. She had no interest in letting me into her life or any interest in being a part of mine.

  No one wanted me. Then, he did. He wanted every part of me. He didn't have to ask too much or wait too long. I let him steal a part of me too. I remember how empty I felt after he took everything, then declared he no longer wanted me. I remember how sick I felt when I found the piece he left with me.

I felt even sicker when I began to love that remnant. It made it all the worse when I learned he was sickly and every part unbearable when he died.

I was a fool to return after I had escaped. Even more of a fool to return for the sake of someone who would not and did not do the same for me. However, my childish desire to be needed and wanted overpowered all my senses.

Everything inside and around me turned a solid unchanging shade of gray,  it stayed that way for a long while. I passed through life in a fog, it was easy. I was able to live off the generousity of old friends. I had no reason to carry on and then she came to me. She was a hollow shell of her former self, nothing about her resembled the older sister I had known. "Please Aria, I need you." She said and that's all it took.

My world remained gray but suddenly there were other shades. My life became an extension of hers, my life was hers.

Then, she was born. Full-term and healthy as could be, the opposite of her cousin that came a year before. At first, everything was colorful again, the two days I spent with them in the hospital, were the first two days I felt happiness; and then, they were discharged.

~~~~~~~~~~

  "Please, just be quiet!" Nikki cries out in exhausted fustration. I watch from the open doorway of my older sister's bedroom, Nikki paces around her room. Nikki adjusts the baby in her arms, moving the newborn from resting against her shoulder to cradling her daughter in front of her body. She looks at the baby with tired desperate eyes, "I don't know what you want."

Just as the daylight hours are the worst for me, the night hours are Nikki's personal hell. Tonight started as all the others, Nikki trying to soothe the baby, whose cries grow louder by the minute.

  I step forward in the room, "Nikki, let me help." I say.

"No!" Nikki snaps at me. She puts the baby back up to her shoulder, "I don't need help. I'm fine." 

  This is how it always is. Nikki refusing my help and insisting she can handle everything.
She sets the baby down in the center of her bed. She turns away, throwing her hands to her ears and squeezing her eyes shut. "I just need to think. LET ME THINK!" She yells over the baby's cries. She can yell and scream as much as she wishes, our parents are away for the weekend. Even if they were home, their bedroom is on the other side of the house, an explosion could go off on this side of the house without even slightly shaking their room.

"Nikki," I say reaching out to my sister. "It will get better, give it time. It's hard at the start." I say comfortingly.

Nikki lets out a shaky breath, with her hands braced on the bed, she eases herself down to the ground. "I can't do this anymore." She says. "I can't. I can't." She shakes her head.

"Nikki, it's going to be alright." I say. I pick my niece up and get to work at trying to soothe her.

"No, it's not." Nikki snaps at me. "Nothing I do is enough for her. I have nothing left to give her."

"Don't say that." I say, carefully lowering myself to sit next to my sister. "She needs your love. She needs you."

"She doesn't even know who I am." Nikki says with a sad scoff, tears falling from her eyes. "We're strangers to each other. There's nothing... no connection or bond."

"It will come with time." I assure her.

Nikki looks at me with a wild hope her eyes. She opens her mouth to say something but turns away instead.

"It will get easier, trust me." I say to her.

"How would you know?" She asks.

Though I know she didn't mean the question as a jab, it still hurts nonetheless. "I wouldn't." I confess.

"Exactly." Nikki leans her head back and rests it on her bed. "Aria... I'm exhausted... I don't know how much longer I can do this."

I understand completely what she is saying. "Just give me some more time. Let things settle." I tell her.

"I don't know if I can." Nikki says.

"You have do. There's no other way, you said so yourself." I remind her.

"Maybe I was just lying to myself." She says.

"Still, please give me more time." I say. "Promise me?"

Nikki is silent. "Please, promise me. We have a deal." I say to her.

"You go to bed." Nikki says, she lets out a grunt of pain as she picks herself up. "I can handle this." She takes my niece from my arms. "I think she may be hungry again."

I stand up, "Nikki, please." I plead.

"Get some sleep, you have school tomorrow." She says.

I want to stay and fight, but I am fully aware of how powerless I am. All I can do is cling to Nikki and I's agreement; and hope Nikki will hold on too.

***AUTHOR'S NOTE***

I promise I'm not being late on purpose. These past two chapters have been difficult to write, more so than anticipated. I apologize for delay again.

Next chapter will be a present-day one, that takes place toward/at the end of summer.

THANK YOU FOR READING! I HOPE YOU ENJOYED!

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