#Day 2
Chapter 11
Ava POV
I lie on the beach, staring out to the blue abyss of sea and sky. "Well…" I start. "The first business I started, I called Disgustingly Pink. The main thing that drove me made when looking at others' designs in my last job was that there was so much pink, pink, and pink, it was disgusting. Disgustingly Pink. Anyway all I really had to do to get that business going was talk with some of my connections, and throw a few of my designs around, and it pretty much built itself."
"Wait… You're not talking about the same Disgustingly Pink that like the hottest of hot are wearing, right?" Leah ask, rolling over on her beach towel to look at me. Leah got to the beach almost an hour ago and I have slowly been answering her questions, as Chaska plays around in the sand by the shore.
"Yes," I nod.
"No, no, no, no, no, you're joking," Leah says, sitting up to look at me a little bit more seriously.
"No, I own Disgustingly Pink," I smile.
"Like the one with three-digit price tags? And brand looks like a black ink stain with-"
"-Pink lipstick written over it. Yep." I cut in, nodding and chuckling at her shocked, disbelieving face.
"No way," she hisses, leaning back a little, her eyebrows raising a little higher.
"Way," I chuckle, and pull my knees to my chest, resting my chin on my knees.
"W-wow," she stutters.
"Yeah…" I chuckle, starting again. "And since that business was going so well, I looked into doing something I could be a bit more hands on with. Jewellery caught my interest, so I started up Sleek Silver. Then I just kept getting more ideas, more people wanting to work with me, and life just took off. I started up Saxon, Glass Slipper, G Baby B, X's and O's, Cold Kisses, Black Moose, Switch Witch, and Golden Moon."
"I just… then how have I never heard of you?"
"Well it's not like I write my name on everything, that's what a brand is for. And how many high-end fashion lines are there around here that would have photos of me on their walls, displaying the latest trend on the catwalk. If you looked into brands, probably found my name but… Leah I didn't want to be found. If I did, I would have put my name out there, but I didn't, so I hid behind Disgustingly Pink, Sleek Silver, X's and O's-"
"But if I had worked it out, then I could have brought you home. Where you should have been all along." Her voice holds hurt mixed with frustration.
"Or scared me off, so I never came back here again. Leah stuff happens for a reason, so people can find their own way," I say looking her in the eyes, raising my voice a bit. Even though I know it won't help get my point through to her, I can't help it.
"Ava you don't know what you did when you left here," Leah's voice raises slightly. As well as tears of hurt appearing in her eyes, even though her face is covered with anger and frustration.
"I did what was best for everyone!" Even as kids if I spent too much time talking over life with Leah we would start off happy, go from that to sad, then happy, frustrated, angry, sad, then if one of us hadn't already stormed off we could get back to happy, or at least talking.
"No you did what was best for yourself! You hurt everyone," she says, while swatting a few tears off her cheeks with the back of her hands.
"If I stayed, I would have hurt people more. Do you think being the scandal family of the town with the slut daughter that got nuked up to a dead guy, would have been better? There was already enough trouble with making ends meet, let alone adding another mouth to feed into the mix. I would have been working triple shifts on whatever dead-end job I could get, for the rest of my miserable life and still have bills coming out of my ears, and a kid I couldn't provide for-"
"Money isn't important," she says, with hand gestures that express her annoyance.
"Leah, I know my leaving hurt you, but me staying here would have hurt you even more," I say, running my hands over my face, muffling my voice a bit.
"We would have found a way…" she sighs.
"No, we wouldn't have. And what is done is done, the only reason to dwell on the past is when you have no future to look at, and we have a long and happy future to look at now," I say calmly, looking back to the sea and sky.
We go into silence for a few moments, the air between us cooling off. I sigh, then ask "So how the hell are you, Miss Leah Bree Clearwater, engaged to Paul Lahote?" Leah's face cracks into a huge grin, her eyes lighting up. She chuckles and flops back on her towel.
"How the hell was that not the first question you asked?" she giggles.
"Must have slipped my mind?" I smile. "So, details please. Last I heard you talking about Paul he was the scum of all evil and bad in the world."
"Okay, umm… Well I guess I never really hated him, just… probably just pissed he never looked at me like, I don't know, like he did the other girls." Leah shrugs, still lying down. Out of the corner of my eye I see her naturally dark cheeks go a bit red, as she drapes her arms over her eyes.
"What? Like a piece of meat?" I snarl a bit. I know what Paul was like, he uses to hang out with John a fair bit back in the day, and I heard of his accomplishments, many times.
"No just, well at least they got his attention," she mumbles.
"So what did you have to do to get his attention? Last night if you weren't locked in his arms he couldn't look away from you any longer than ten seconds." I smirk when I see her bite her bottom lip nervously.
"Nothing really, just one day he came to school and saw me differently," she shrugs.
"Oh yeah… Can I get a little more detail than that?"
"Well it was Tuesday, the second of M-"
"Okay a little less detail."
"Well I was just standing at my locker, grabbing my books for the first classes that day, and out of nowhere someone tapped me lightly on the shoulder. I turned around to see Paul, he had this stupid look on his face, like he was seeing me for the first time…" she speaks wistfully, words filled with such happiness and love it makes my own heart swell with sweetness.
"Finally noticed what he'd been missing." She giggles at me, lifting her foot and pushing it into my shoulder playfully, only making me rock slightly.
"Yeah, I guess so… Well he asked me out, caught me right off guard, I thought it was just a rude prank so I said no and told him to go ask one of his sluts. He looked so fucking sad, my heart felt like it would break if I kept looking at him, so I hightailed it off to class," she smiles to her own thoughts. "Then he, like, kept appearing wherever I was, it kind of scared the shit out of me."
"Wow, don't think mum read us that fairy tale. The princess and the stalker. Nope, doesn't ring a bell." She kicks at me again, laughing away.
"Well I ignored him for a while, then it started to get right on my nerves so I asked him what it would take to get rid of him. One date, he wanted one date with me. I gave in and said yes, not caring if it all ended up a big joke on me, I just needed to get him off my mind, he was already affecting my schoolwork and job at the diner."
"So with the rock on your finger, I'm guessing the date went well." It feels nice to sister-talk, Max try's her best but it's not the same as this.
"Yes…" she smiles. "That next weekend Paul took me out to a restaurant in Seattle, and it didn't look cheap either. It was really fun, and he was so easy to talk to, so not the same Paul I thought he was. On the ride home he told me this really sweet story of how he didn't pay me any attention because he was scared of hurting me and stuff like that. After that I didn't care if it was a joke and if it would backfire on me, I asked him on another date, and well the rest is just a part of history…"
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