The first couple of albums are from before Ariana came into their lives. I’m even in a few of them, much to the delight of Ariana. She squeals adorably every time she sees one. Mom’s face pinches in a little bit more each time.
Ariana starts to appear in them. She’s super skinny in the pictures from when she moved into this house and looks fragile even though I know she was a fierce little thing. Still is.
There’s hundreds of photos. A visual timeline of their lives, minus the year after the attack. Mia’s already had the ones we took before the party a few weeks ago printed and added to an album. The way I looked at Ari that day in those pictures… and the way she looked at me… no wonder everyone knew how we felt about each other.
My mom glances at photos here and there but mostly sits off to the side, disinterested. My dad, though? He can’t get enough ofthem. I think he’s regretting that we weren’t a part of this history. I’m just glad we’re here now.
“Alright, everyone, move it to the theater room,” Lil says, standing and walking that way to get everything set up. Ariana’s tucked up against my side.
“God, this is going to be embarrassing,” she groans.
“I’m pretty sure the word you’re looking for is ‘awesome,’ baby,” I grin at her, then kiss her.
“I’m looking forward to the band videos,” Dad says as we get up and head for the stairs.
“That’s because you haven’t heard how crappy we were yet.”
I sit in one of the front-row recliners and pull Ariana down with me. She snuggles in, and I cover her with the blanket I grabbed on the way in. I don’t know if she really gets cold or if it’s a comfort thing, but she likes her blankets. Lil and my dad take the other front-row seats, while Marco, Mia, and my mom take the back row.
A video starts, and it takes me a second to recognize Ariana holding a guitar. “What in the holy peroxide?” Her hair was long, almost to her waist, and platinum blonde.
“A mistake of epic proportions.”
I squint, trying to make out the words on her shirt. “Bleeding Buckets? Is that seriously what you called your band?”
“This was a terrible idea,” Ariana giggles next to me.
“Starting the band or watching these videos,” I tease. They were not good.
“Both.”
She shifts a little, grazing my cock with her hand under the blanket and playing it off like she didn’t mean to do it, but I see the little bratty smirk she can’t hide. For about the hundredth time since we came back upstairs, my mind flips back to the fact that she’s wearing panties filled with my cum, and my jeans get uncomfortable again.Fuck me.
A new video starts, and there’s Ariana in a cheerleading uniform, holding pom poms in her hands.
“Oh, fuck you, Lilith.”
Lil cackles in response.
After a few minutes of jumps and flips and pom pom waving, she stomps up to Lil and declares she’s quitting because the cheering part of cheerleading ‘sucks ass.’
“There better be some embarrassing Lil shit on this screen tonight.”
“How about my bit part in Romeo and Juliet sophomore year?”
“It’s a fucking start.”
Lil had three lines, and she messed every single one of them up and then didn’t leave the stage when she was supposed to. She just stood awkwardly off to one side. For twenty-three minutes.
Last up is an edited montage video of their road trip. There’s a lot of Ariana driving with her knee, all the girls car-dancing to loud music, and sitting around a fire on the beach smoking cigarettes. Then they’re all fighting about who should jump off a cliff into the water below first when Ariana runs past them and jumps right off the damn thing as they scream her name. My stomach drops watching it.
“Alright, alright. I think it’s time for us all to go to bed because there’s a lot going on tomorrow,” Marco says when the video is over. I notice my mom is already gone. I don’t know when she left the room.
Lil claps her hands. “Fuck yes, cake baking! I call dibs on the bowls!”
Ariana laughs. “You always call dibs on the bowls.”
As soon as our door closes, I grab Ariana and pull her up against me. “Sometimes you’re so damn fearless it scares the fuck out of me.”
