"L A B E L S"

Episode 107

DON'T FORGET TO HIT THAT PLAY BUTTON! ;)

GOT ANOTHER CHAPTER WROTE TONIGHT! YAY! FIRST TIME I'VE BEEN ABLE TO WRITE IN WEEEEEEKS! WORK SUCKS :( ANYWHO, READ ON, LOVLIES ;)

~

~ Present Time ~

“Nicholas and I have been dating since middle school,” Scarlett begins, “but our freshman year of high school is when our friends came into the picture. During our freshman year, Nicholas became real good friends with my brother for some odd reason. He was four years older than us and a senior so I think Nicholas just looked up to him, in a way, something to aspire to.”

Scarlett is prepared to continue but Dr. Linda breaks into the story before she can. “Did you? Look up to your brother, I mean.”

“He’s my brother, we fought and bickered but yes, despite it all I adored my brother and admired him just as much as every other kid at Bradley High. He was my hero,” Scarlett swallows back the fear at where this conversation was headed but decides to be her own hero for once, “in more ways than one.”

“What does that mean?” Dr. Linda pries with a calm and soothing tone to her voice that could probably lure politicians into telling the truth.

“He took the heat for me a lot when we were younger. Our dad…he was grumpy a lot.” Scarlett’s eyes widen at the sound of her words and she can feel her stomach twisting and seething inside. She never once correlated the word she gave Audrey to use and the word she used when she was little.

“Grumpy?”

“Angry.” She tries to correct herself but even angry didn’t seem like a strong enough adjective and she could tell Dr. Linda was going to pry for more details. “He was abusive.”

Dr. Linda scribbles something down on her clipboard while continuing to question for details. “Physically? Mentally? Sexually?”

Scarlett debates for a moment in her head, knowing Dr. Linda was expecting one of the three but the only word that comes to her head is, “yes.”

She looks up from the clipboard and waits for Scarlett to continue.

“My father was a terrible man. It has taken me over eight years to finally admit that just because that man shared my DNA, it didn’t make him worthy of the title.”

“Did Nicholas know what was going on at the time?”

Scarlett shakes her head. “He didn’t find out until senior year. We broke up for almost three years while we were in high school.”

Dr. Linda’s eyes widen in interest. “Really? What was the cause of such a long break only to find your way back nearly three years later?”

“My father.” Scarlett answers bluntly. “He threatened me after Nicholas’ father fired him and I was afraid he would hurt someone I loved if I didn’t end things with Nicholas.”

“Your father worked for Nicholas’?” Scarlett nods. “Why didn’t you just tell Nicholas what was going on at home?”

“I didn’t want to put him at risk. If he had known the truth at that time there’s no doubt in my mind he would have risked everything to help and I just couldn’t let him do that. So, I broke up with him.”

“How did he take it?”

“He was hurt and angry. I came to his house the night after my father made his threats. I slept with Nicholas because I read Romeo and Juliet one too many times but it only made things worse because he ended up hating himself, thinking it was something he did. My father left us about three weeks after all of that happened. Normally, when a father leaves his family it’s all tears and anger but the only thing that went on in our house after he left was celebration. We were scared, thinking he may come back, but drawers were cleaned out and we could only hope he was gone for good. That Monday after he left I went to tell Nicholas everything. I was going to tell him about my father, about how I still loved him but I was a little too late, or at least I thought. I found him kissing Taylor Alison in the front of his locker.” Scarlett chuckles and shakes her head, lost in the memories and how everything seems so much lighter eight years later. “Little did I know he was only trying to make me jealous and that girl I thought I automatically had to hate, ended up being one of my best friend’s.”