Forget Me Not

Chapter 17

"We wait around a lifetime for one person, we can find in a moment with someone else. "

- Stephanie Klein.

Aria

"Sit down." Confused, Ezra sat down on the couch with his hands folded together in his lap. I stood before him, just as short as I always had been. These were the only moments when I would ever be as tall - or taller - than him.

"What's going on, Aria?" I could tell just by his tone that he was even more nervous than I was for what I was about to say. What would be worse? Telling him that he had some secret kid that he didn't know about? Been there, done that. I realized a while ago that my life was like a really bad Lifetime movie. "Does this have anything to do with your plan? About Alison?"

"Yes." It was then that I grew an ounce of confidence. He wouldn't be that mad, would he? It's not like it was my fault...but it was....I made him leave. I forced him out of Rosewood, forced him to encounter the doom Alison had prepared for him. His leg was bouncing up and down and you could almost hear his heart beating, despite the short distance between us.

"Go on." I bit my lip, twiddling my thumbs at his command. I did have a right to be nervous, to say it out loud. Like I said, it really was my fault.

"Ezra, when I tell you this, I want you to hear me out and listen to everything I have to say. Can you do that?" I was talking to him like a baby, plus I was being unknowingly ironic. Why would he listen to me say that it was Alison who caused the accident? Afterall, she's his almost ex-wife, and mother of a daughter whom he loves so very dearly.

Of course he wouldn't return the favor of listening when everything he said to me when he was writing the book went through one ear and out the other.

"Okay? Can you just tell me? You're starting to scare me." I sighed, looking him straight in the eye, looking for a shred of something - anything. They just stayed a deep ice blue.

"I was out late last night." He was following and encouraging me to continue with small head gestures. "I was with Jason DiLaurentis. In case you didn't remember, that's Alison's brother, who told me that he wasn't allowed to have anything to do with your and Alison's family, and I know why.." Ezra scrunched his forehead.

"Alison always told me that it was because he got back into drugs and alcohol and she didn't want him around Marley while he was still hooked. But why should I beleive her now? She lied to me about my entire life." He laughed nervously. "But, why did she keep him away, the real reason?"

Sucking in every molecule of oxygen, then swallowing my pride, I belted it out like it was a song that I couldn't keep inside my head.

"Alison was the one who caused the accident."

Breathing ceased to be heard, but two hearts pounding against two ribcages wasn't enough to justify what I had just done. I had officially ruined everything; it was demolished in a pit of Alison's 'I told you so'. She knew that just this would happen, build our relationship up to such a fragile point, just to lose the pieces in the dark once again. If things stayed silent much longer, I was sure that my void would have returned and been just as big as it was before.

"She wasn't in the car. She paid Jason to hit you. Alison wanted you to either die or have severe brain damage..which was pretty successful." I refused to cry. It wasn't a time for me to be crying. I had no reason to shed a tear in his direction right now. Our story had always played out as him as the strong one, but not today.

He crummbled. He let out of a strangled sound, like a whine and a sob and a growl all at once. He pressed his palms to his eyes so hard that his knuckles turned white, but after a heartbeat, he removed them, looked at me, and stood up. I don't remember what the expression on my face said to him, but I imagine it wasn't the best look I've worn.