A/N: I know I said almost three years ago that this story was intended to be a oneshot, and at the time I meant it. I couldn't see continuing to write something that had so much pain in it, but as time rolled on, losing my friend honestly became the hardest loss I've ever felt. I still grieve him today, which is why I continue writing this story. Grief doesn't end when the year ends; we just learn to live with it through time. That said, I have no inentions of writing a version of this story where Aria moves on and finds a new guy to marry, because this story has always just been about my grieving and moving forward. Still, I hope you'll forgive me (if you've been following these oneshots; I'm not sure anyone actually reads them. If you do, give me a shout!) for continuing these stories. They've managed to give me a bigger outlet in what I feel in my heart than almost anything else, so I'm grateful.
Think Of You
"Mmma." Harper giggles. "Mama."
Aria glances up at her and smiles. Edison is standing behind her, holding her hands to help her stay upright.
"Hi, baby!" She calls out cheerfully. She walks around the counter of her gallery and walks over to her daughter before dropping to her knees and reaching out towards her. Harper grabs Aria's hands, and Aria pulls her in, hugging her. The tile floor is cold against her knees from the air conditioning, but it's so hot outside that she doesn't mind.
"Did you have a good time at the park?" Aria asks as she looks up at Edison.
He nods. "It was great, darling."
Aria internalizes a chuckle, smiling at him. Though she's used to seeing him call her darling via email, it still feels odd when she hears him actually say it. She's sure it will eventually grow on her.
Edison glances past her, and then steps around her as she plants herself on the floor, holding onto Harper as the baby stands with her mother's help.
"This is from last summer, yes?" Edison asks. He has moved across the room and is pointing at a photo of Ezra. They had been at yet another work event, and she had brought her camera to entertain herself. At one point, she'd gotten up to get herself a drink because Ezra wasn't socializing, and while she was gone, he'd started talking to the wife of one of the Greek Literature professors. She later found out that they were debating the Greek roots in the Harry Potter books-Ezra had been reading them to a still-gestating Harper-and the conversation had gotten heated. Aria had snapped a photo of him laughing at a comment the woman had made, and while the he had been reacting in a sarcastic manner, he'd obviously been entertained because he genuinely looked happy.
"Yeah," Aria replies. "It was the end of the year faculty mixer."
"Is this for sale?" Edison asks. He looks back at her.
Aria shrugs. "I mean, yeah. It's been there for a while though, and everyone just kinda walks right past it."
"What do you want for it?" Edison asks.
"That framed one there is seventy-five. I've got a canvas printed in the back for one twenty-five that I was gonna take home, but if you want it-"
"I'll double it and give you two fifty," Edison comments as he strides back over to her, pulling money out of his pocket.
Aria shakes her head, raising a dismissive hand at him. "Edison, it's alright. I'd give it to you for-...well, not free because canvas and framing is expensive, but-"
He cuts her off a second time, shaking his head at back at her. "Let me pay you for it," he insists. "I want to support the cause." He places the money on the counter. "Speaking of, have you shot any new photos of this little one?"
Aria looks back down at her daughter and smiles. "No, not really. I mean I have some of her crawling around the kitchen floor, but I've been meaning to get some of her actually playing here in the studio. I just haven't had the time."
"Can I pay you to book a session with her?" He asks. "I'll help however I can."
Aria smiles at him. She knows he means with Harper in the pictures, but it's true in the grander sense as well. He's so determined at every turn to help as much as possible that it breaks her heart sometimes, because she knows most of his reasoning for it has to do with the fact that his son is gone.
"Sure," she replies after a long moment. She stands up, leaving Harper on the floor, though the little girl soon busies herself with her diaper bag sitting nearby. Aria strides over to the counter and glances down at her planner. "I've got some open time tomorrow, if you can do that."
Edison nods. "Even if something did interfere, I'd reschedule."
Aria smiles at him and then scrawls Harper's name into the empty spot on her planner. As she drops her pen back onto the counter, her computer chimes with a new notification. Given that she's basically a one-woman company, she allows her clients to cancel by call, text, and e-mail since most of them are parents. However, it's a reminder popping up, and she glances back up at Edison.
"Hey, I have a shoot with Spencer and Hardy in a bit," she comments. "Can you get Harper to Zak?"
Edison nods, pulling his phone from his pocket. He types out a text quickly and then walks back over to the counter, stopping just before it to pick up Harper.
"Let me know when you're ready to package that picture for sending," he comments. "I want to make sure it's shipped properly."
Aria just nods, refrains from commenting again that he doesn't have to pay. She rounds the counter and kisses her daughter's forehead.
"See you soon, baby girl," she murmurs softly as she smiles at her. Harper coos at her and Aria chuckles before looking up at Edison and nodding that it's okay for him to go. The two share a quiet glance for which too many words could fill, but he turns and leaves afterwards, and Aria watches until he and Harper are both in his car, driving away.
.,.
Aria arrives across town some thirty minutes later, equipped with both her digital camera as well as the first camera Ezra ever bought for her, along with several rolls of film. Spencer and Hardy haven't arrived yet, so she stands outside Ten To One, adjusting the straps on both cameras and checking the batteries repeatedly. She made sure to charge her digital camera the night before, but she's always antsy before a shoot, always trying to make sure she's completely prepared for anything.
She keys up the settings and shoots a few test shots down the block, catching a couple's shadow against sun-beaten sidewalk. A moment later, she turns and points her camera at the sidewalk corner where two friends are standing. One tells the other something that must be hilarious, as they begin to laugh as they stand waiting for the go-ahead to cross safely. She snaps the photo and then turns once more and zooms her camera in, snapping a picture of the sign of the building.
When she turns back around, Spencer and Hardy have pulled up to the curb a few feet away and are getting out of the car. As she watches them, she can't help giggling. Pregnancy has been rough for Spencer, and Hardy always seems to take the brunt of it even though he's waited on her endlessly. He's done everything he can to aide her, from her cravings to her constant morning sickness, but there's always something else that has her frustrated. Lately, she's been blaming him for the fact that he turns her on so much.
'Help me' Hardy mouths widely from behind Spencer as they stride up. Aria smirks at him and hugs her best friend.
"Having a rough day?" Aria asks Spencer.
"This kid won't let me stop peeing every twenty minutes," Spencer grumbles. "And when I'm not doing that, I'm hungry. There's no happy medium."
"Well at least you're almost done," Aria comments as she places her hand on Spencer's stomach. Spencer grabs her wrist and shifts it a few inches before Aria feels movement. She smiles and glances back up at Spencer. "Are you guys ready for this?"
"Can you stand not killing me for the next hour?" Hardy asks his wife nervously. Aria does her best to stifle her chuckling. Still, Spencer has to stare at him for a few seconds, contemplating, before she nods.
"Great," Aria comments.
She walks them through numerous poses and angles through the next hour. The final one has Hardy on his knees, kissing the baby bump in front of the sign for the bar. It's not the first time she's shot a photo of Spencer and Hardy in front of the sign, either. She shot their engagement photos in the same spot the previous winter, and then they stopped off to shoot pictures several months earlier on the day of the wedding. In the process of it all, they've gotten to know the owner fairly well.
"So we're not coming back here to shoot newborn photos in three months," Aria teased as they walked into the bar. Spencer needs to pee again. "It's gonna be pretty cold by then."
"Weather permitting, Spencer wants to shoot them at the her parents outside the barn," Hardy comments as they lean against the wall. "Plus she wants to incorporate roses and wood into the photos."
Aria nods. She would never admit it out loud, but it's not the first time someone has asked her to incorporate the two into photos, given the town's name.
"You ever think about dating again?" Hardy asks after a few seconds of silence.
Aria looks up at him and shrugs. "Hardly. It feels too abstract. Why?"
Hardy shrugs, glances over towards the bar. "Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like if I tried to socialize with someone like Ezra and I did. Besides Spencer, I mean."
"Someone to watch football with, you mean?" Aria comments.
Hardy shrugs again. "I guess."
"Well, as much as I love Ezra, I think he would want you make new friends and enjoy your life," Aria states. "He certainly wouldn't want you to stop living it just because he's not here anymore."
Hardy glances back down at her, furrows his brow.
"Yeah," he replies. "But don't you think he'd feel the same way about you? Don't you think he'd want you to move forward, find someone to help you with Harper? Maybe even try to be happy again?"
"I don't know," Aria sighs. "I mean logically, yes, I know he would want that because he said as much, but I can't fathom a future where I'm remarried and Harper has siblings right now," she comments. "Even if I could, I don't think I could do that to his parents and his brother."
"Yeah, but you can't let their feelings dictate what you do with the rest of your life," Hardy states.
"Maybe so," Aria agrees. "But I also can't imagine doing something to set off Wes, right now. He's just started coming around to see Harper as it is." She pauses for a moment, and then looks up at Hardy again. "All of that aside, I still go to bed every night, waiting for him to be there next to me. I don't really think that qualifies me as ready to move on."
Hardy nods, and there's a familiarity to the look in his eyes that tells Aria that his questions aren't in fact his own. It doesn't surprise her, though. Spencer has long-since begun using her husband to get Aria to talk about how she's doing after Ezra.
"Just tell her I'm fine," Aria tells him when she spots Spencer walking out of the bathroom. "Harper and I are moving forward at our own pace."
.,.
Upon arriving to her mother's place, Aria finds out that The Brew had a fire and Zak isn't around. She isn't worried, as Ella tells her the fire only caused minor surface damage, but in his haste, he dropped Harper by Byron, which is how Aria finds herself standing in her father's condo in Philadelphia an hour after her shoot with Spencer and Hardy.
"Was she good for you?" Aria asks as she plays with blocks with Harper.
Byron nods as he walks over to her and hands her a cup of coffee. Aria takes it gratefully and sips from it before resuming playing with her daughter.
"We had a great time," Byron comments. "We had squash and beets for dinner, and then a few licks of ice cream for dessert."
Aria chuckles, glancing down at her daughter's clothes. The remnants of vanilla ice cream drippings are still present on the baby's t-shirt.
"How's the gallery?" Byron asks. "Are you getting more traffic?"
Aria shrugs a shoulder, leaning back against the couch as she looks up at him. "Here and there. It gets more traction when school is in session, but summer is pretty slow, aside from gallery showings. But we'll be fine until August when people start rolling in for new photos."
Byron nods. For a moment, the two of them watch Harper wordlessly, and it's moments like that where Aria struggles with her father. She doesn't know how to fill the spaces without feeling awkward.
She glances around the room, and it's easily clear that Byron is just like Ella as a grandparent. Harper has taken over every inch in some way or another, whether it's by her toys or pack and play, everything screams 'there's a young child here'.
"Can I tell you something?" Byron asks, surprising Aria. She's not sure he's ever requested to tell her anything.
She looks up at him and nods.
"I saw Ezra," Byron comments. "A few days before. He was in his office."
Aria furrows her brow. She's never heard about this. "Did you guys fight?"
Byron shakes her head, looking down at his cup of coffee. She can tell whatever it is that he wants to say, he's struggling with it. After a silent minute, however, he clears his throat and speaks.
"He was just getting off the phone," Byron tells her. "Your mom had just told me a few weeks earlier that you were pregnant, and I was trying to figure out what the next course of action should be. It'd been so long since we had talked..." He pauses, and though he's still looking at his coffee, Aria can see her father's eyes getting glassy with tears. "I still didn't know how to-...to find my way around my feelings about you and Ezra," Byron explains. He chuckles, finally looking up at her. "But didn't want to miss a second of her life."
Aria frowns, if only because that was exactly what happened. Byron tried to phone her for weeks after Ezra's funeral, but she refused to hear from him. She didn't want anything from him when he'd always refused to accept Ezra as a part of her life.
"What happened?" Aria asks.
"We talked for a while," Byron replies, his voice cracking to a whisper. "I told him I'd been trying to figure out how to reach out to you two, and that I hoped maybe in time you would let me back in. He said that you'd been talking about wanting to do just that for a while, and we started making plans to surprise you at your baby shower."
A sob escapes Aria unexpectedly, and she scares herself at the sound of it as her free hand falls over her mouth.
"Oh my god," she cries. "Dad-"
Harper crawls over her blocks into Aria's lap and begins to cry, unsure of why her mother is upset. It forces Aria to put her coffee down and tend to her daughter, though she can't figure out how to stop the flow of tears.
"Dad, I-"
"No, Aria," Byron replies insistently. He quickly places his coffee on the side table next to the couch and moves down onto the floor next to her, shaking his head as he places a hand on her back. "I didn't mean to upset you. I just-"
"He never told me," she cries softly, rocking Harper in her best attempt to calm her. "I thought you only wanted to be around because he was gone."
Byron shakes his head, moving closer and looping his arm around Aria and pulling her into his side while he moves her cup of coffee with his free hand.
She sobs freely into his shoulder, feeling guilt and self-hatred for deleting all of his messages before listening to them. If only she'd listened to a single one of them, she could've known sooner.
It takes a few minutes before she's able to calm both herself and Harper, but when she does, Byron reaches for his phone and opens his texts. He scrolls through them to his conversation thread with Ezra before handing it over to Aria.
"We were supposed to meet that night," Byron tells her. "He wanted to make sure everything went right that day for you."
Aria nods as several more tears fall silently. Harper has fallen asleep in her lap, and the last thing she wants to do is wake her with more tears.
"Did he seem happy?" Aria asks. She can't help herself. No matter how many people have said yes, she still feels the need to ask every new person, just in case.
Byron nods. "I could tell he was nervous, but he was elated, sweetie."
Aria passes Byron's phone back to him and shifts Harper gently in her arms. She can't help the urge within herself to look at her daughter in that moment. Sometimes Harper feels like the only tangible link left to Ezra.
"There's so much I get so angry about still," she says softly as she stares down at her daughter. "Every time she does something new, or something sassy, or funny, I want him to be there to see it. Any of it; all of it. I want him here celebrating it all with me."
Byron nods wordlessly. He knows there aren't any words that will fill that void.
"Do you think he'd be mad that I'm not doing everything he wanted me to do?" Aria asks.
Byron shakes his head. "As a man who used to be married, Aria I promise you the only thing he would want was for you to be happy doing whatever you're doing. He wouldn't care if it took you six months longer than expected, or six years longer. Above all of it, he would want you to make sure Harper came first, and you do just that. I promise you that wherever he is right now, he's so proud of you."
Aria nods. Her throat is still too tight to reply, and she really doesn't have the words to respond as it is. What Byron has just said has come from many other people's mouths in the ten months, but there's something different hearing it from her father-the very man who tried more than once to condemn Ezra.
They sit and talk for a while, and eventually Aria puts Harper down in the pack and play when she comes to the conclusion that she's probably not going to make it home that night. Instead, she and her father sit on either end of his black suede couch with their coffee, talking about anything and everything. Every time one of them yawns, they find themselves nursing fresh cups of coffee, and even though she can tell they're both getting exhausted as the night rolls on, she doesn't want the conversation to end.
"I think the biggest misconception I've seen people have is that you just get over it one day," Aria comments wearily.
Byron nods. "Someone said to me once that it was like a hurricane. When it starts, everything is full-force, in the center of it all; and then slowly but surely, things stop flying all around, and it fades to a bad thunderstorm, and then then to a torrential downpour. That's when everyone start's to think that the sun is back out, though," he states.
Aria nods. "I still have a lot of thunderstorms."
"That's something you don't learn until you lose someone that close to you, though," Byron comments. "While everyone around us comes to the conclusion that the sun is out, those who have suffered such a loss know better than that. They know it's still raining; they've just learned to dance in it."