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She sat on my bed and I raised an eyebrow at her. Did she not hear me? She took my hand and started applying mint ointment to my knuckles, while blowing on it to ease the pain.
“Ariana...” I warned.
She picked up a white bandage and proceeded to dress up the wound. I felt a tear drop on my hand and I dipped my finger under her chin, raising her head up to see her. My heart shattered into a million pieces when I espied her eyes glassy with tears.
“Ariana?”
“I don’t want to be scared of you, Lexi,” she said, then shook her head. “No, I’m not scared of you. You are my sister and my only family. Who will be with me if I am scared of you?” My eyes softened and she continued.
“I am now old enough to understand you, only if you stop trying to push us away when you are going through some things, like you were earlier.”
Sometimes she surprised me with how smart and sharp she could be. Then whenever I remembered that I raised her, I commended myself. I guessed I was doing a good job after all. She needed to be smart and sharp, for her own sake.
I cupped her cheek. “Ariana, you are nottooyoung to understand, but you are not old enough either. One day I’ll tell you and when you get a little older, you will understand it. But right now, when I say I need a moment to myself, I want you to give me a moment to myself.”
“And I appreciate that you don’t want to be scared of me,Idon’t want you to be scared of me either. Which is why the times I ask you to give me moments to myself are the times when I’m scary.”
“But I don’t want you to go through it alone, even if it’s the time you’re scary, I still want to be with you because I know you will never hurt me.” She argued softly, and I smiled at her innocence.
“Don’t trust me, Ari, sometimes the people you trust are the ones who hurt you the most. True, I hope I never hurt you, but don’t ever make the mistake of trusting me. I won’t feel bad if I hear that you don’t trust me. In fact I will be proud of you.”
“I shouldn’t trust Ken too?” She questioned, innocently tilting her head and I shook my head.
“I’m not saying that. Ken is your brother, he can protect you. But you should also learn to protect yourself too because sometimes, we might need to protect ourselves from people who should protect us. Sometimes, people who say they don’t trust anybody are people who have seen the danger in it, people who have seen darkness and returned. So instead of waiting to see darkness too, why don’t we just learn from other people’s mistakes?” I said and from the corner of my eyes, I saw Kendal nodding his head attentively.
“But you don’t trust anyone either, have you seen darkness and returned?” She questioned and I smiled.
“What is in the tray?” I changed the topic
“It has waffles in it. We also made cupcakes and there's chocolate in there. Kendal also made avocado toast for you, we hope you’ll like it. We also got cherries for you, they are fresh.” She lost focus and followed the changed subject, while Kendal narrowed his eyes at me. I was glad he didn’t say anything about it.
He was too smart for his age.
“Alright I’ll eat it,” I said and they both beamed widely.
“Yes, you’ll eat it and after that, you’ll take medicine to lessen the pain in your knuckles, then you can sleep again. You have bandages everywhere now.” Ari said, sighing and shaking her head.
“You have to leave me alone though, so respectfully get out of my room,” I said with a smug smile and tickled Ariana’s sides. She giggled as she got up.
“Don’t do that,” she bubbled between laughter and Kendal signed at me.
‘You’ll rate the food later. We learned to make cupcakes from the internet. Eggless, I promise.’ I nodded in response and he faced his sister.
‘Alright, let’s leave her to herself.’ Ariana nodded obediently, got up from my bed, threw me a flying kiss and left with her older brother.
I heard a beep and picked up my phone to see a message from Chan.
Chan
Babe, I’m leaving for France tomorrow. I know you don’t care, just felt like telling you.
Actually, I know you do. You just like pretending you don’t.
Listen Jordan, I know you won’t believe me, but I also want you to know that I don’t say this often; I feel like a lot of things are about to change.
All in all, I want you to be very careful. I love you.
I threw my phone on the bed and sighed.
