Starlight Key Scene 3 - Childhood Home of Aria Blue (Aria)

Aria stood on the curb, looking up at the old house in guarded horror. She imagined most who saw it appreciated the romance of the old Victorian style home. Painted gray with differing shades of purple from lavender to violet on the trim, it had a large wrap around porch and a three-story turret to the right side of the house, another in the back and a dormered attic space.

This had been the house she’d spent much of her childhood in, but when she and her mother had left the house and the island eleven years ago, she always assumed that would be the last she would ever see of the place. She couldn’t believe her mother had allowed the new husband to move them back here.

She’d been almost happy in Orlando, but her mother never cared about Aria’s happiness, only her own. So here she was, new stepdad, new stepsister, isolated and torn away from her few friends. Back in the place, she hated beyond all reason.

She squinted against the early morning sun, slipping her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. The façade wasn’t as creepy in the daytime. Its old shingle roof, turrets and peeling paint gave it a more of a gothic look, which just lent itself to all manner of ideas for her fertile imagination.

She shook away the thought.

This wasn’t about a fertile imagination run amok. This house haunted her worst nightmares. She just couldn’t entirely remember why. What she knew for certain, was that she hated being back here. She hated Starlight Key. She felt trapped. It was hard to breathe on the small island.

“Aria, stop staring and grab something!” Her mother barked out orders as she flounced passed with nothing more than a garment bag in her hand.

She sighed.

In just three more weeks, she’d be seventeen. After that, she had only one more year before she earned her freedom. Though never in her worst fears had she expected to spend her last year of captivity on the Key. This turn of events only made her life more of a living hell then it had been the last eleven years.

She shivered as a hand suddenly caressed her back.

“Moving day brings out the worst in people, so don’t take Nadine’s mood personally.”

The deep voice spread its soft tendrils around her heart.

She turned and looked up into the dreamy dark eyes of Remi Townsend, the only good thing, to ever happen to her.

“You don’t know her well enough yet. This is her usual mood.” She stared up at him, hoping how she felt about him wasn’t written all over her face.

“Ah, well…” He clearly had nothing else.

Remi was both her savior and her torture. He was perhaps the only person, besides her father to ever be kind to her, but he was also the boyfriend of her exceptional new stepsister.

“Remi!”

Speak of the devil.

Aria tried not to pout, but Tatiana Tarasios was by far the most

shallow, hateful creature she’d ever had the misfortune to meet and to be linked to that girl through her mother’s most recent idiocy was nearly more than she could bear.

“What is it, hon?” Remi stepped around Aria to go to his beloved.

Aria made a face and mimicked silently, What is it, hon?

“I can’t manage most of these boxes. I don’t understand why Tallon didn’t hire a moving company for this.” she whined.

Tatiana was worse than one of those spoiled French poodles and the relationship she had with her father was the strangest father-daughter relationship Aria had ever witnessed. The man spoiled her one minute, barked at her like she was his personal property the next, then she’d catch Tatiana all curled up in Tallon’s lap in a rather sickening display of affection that just bordered on completely inappropriate.

Admittedly, Tatiana was the most gorgeous woman Aria had ever seen up close and in person, but to say her beauty only went skin deep would have been the understatement of the century.

I hate how she has Remi so completely wrapped around her perfectly-manicured bony finger.

Aria stepped passed them into the truck. The ramp wobbled beneath her weight as she ascended and moved to the back wall. She looked for a box with her markings on it. She wanted her stuff. She didn’t care about the rest. Finding a rather large box at the top of a stack in the back corner with Aria written on it in black sharpie, she reached, but struggled under the size and weight as she tried to pull it down into her arms.

“Whoa, let me get that one.” Remi stabilized the box.

His fingers brushed over hers as he grabbed it, causing butterflies to soar in the dark confines of her stomach.

“I can do it.” She tried arguing with him. “Besides, “Little Miss These-things-are-too-heavy- for-me” may be watching. Wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.” She knew her attitude towards Tatiana was petulant at best, but in all fairness, she felt she deserved at least a small amount of bitterness, given the circumstances.

Remi laughed and smiled, showing white, even teeth and two deep dimples.

She very nearly sighed.

Nothing would ever come of the mad crush she had on him, even if he wasn’t her new stepsister’s boyfriend, he was ten years older than she was. Aria didn’t delude herself by thinking that he ever looked at her as anything more than a dumb kid, but she couldn’t help the things she felt for him.

From the moment she first saw him, that night at Tallon’s when she’d gone with her mom for dinner, he lit something up inside her heart that she had never felt before.

He had short, jet black hair that was always styled in such a way that you couldn’t tell whether he liked it rumpled and it had somehow straightened itself, or if he tried to keep it conservative, but he’d run his hand through it one too many times. His eyes were a bright blue unlike anything she’d ever seen and he had impossibly thick lashes that framed those eyes making her want to stare into them forever.

“Let me worry about Tatiana.” He managed to wrestle the box free from her hands.

Emotion she’d been working so hard to keep chained and locked in the basement of her soul suddenly overwhelmed her and she collapsed into a shabby old chair she hoped to lay claim to for her room. It was the kind you just sank into, and as she did, tears she was at a loss to stop bubbled up from inside.

“Hey. Don’t cry.” Remi’s soft concern didn’t help.

He put down the box and squatted in front of her placing his hands gently on her knees.

“It’s not so bad, Aria. You’re just under a lot of stress. I mean good God, I know Nadine sprung the marriage on you, then the move, and yes I even understand Tatiana can be a bit of an acquired taste.” He reached out and grabbed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “But you’re a resilient, smart girl. You’re going to be okay.”

Not beautiful or even pretty, but she’d take resilient and smart, as long as it came from Remi. She was used to being overlooked by the people around her. After all, she had a mother who looked to be about twenty-seven with the body of a swimsuit model and now Tatiana. In their company she looked like a troll doll. It didn’t help any that she was constantly in an up and down struggle with her weight, that her hair was the strangest shade of not quite blonde, not quite red, and that she had long, wild curls that would not be controlled under any circumstance.

She almost wished Remi wouldn’t be so nice to her. She wasn’t used to it in a general sense. It undid her. He made it very difficult for her to keep her walls firmly in place.

“I only have another year and three weeks. That’s fifty-five weeks, totally doable.” She shrugged, all of a sudden feeling a need to make him feel better about her not feeling happy.

He laughed softly. “So you have the math down.”

“I do.”

She’d had the math down for more than four years and it was finally getting close enough to move it solely to weeks. That was exciting!

“Is it really so bad, Aria?” He cocked his head to one side and seemed to be examining her expression.

She pushed back all the strands of hair that had come lose from her ponytail. Not quite being able to stop the immediate comparison to Tatiana, she thought. Tatiana’s blonde was so vibrant and her eyes so perfectly blue, like an ocean, and her skin flawless. Aria bet the girl had never had a pimple in her entire life. It was a petty thought, yes, but when you were staring into the oh-so-blue eyes of Remi Townsend, it was hard not to compare yourself to his oh-so-perfect model girlfriend.

“It’s fine I suppose.” She shrugged again.

There was no way she was going to burden him with all her tales of teenage angst and childhood woe. Just in case he’d forgotten, exactly how young she was and could possibly be looking at her as an equal and not a child.

Sadness passed his beautiful eyes.

“It doesn’t sound so fine, sweetheart.” He frowned.

The tenderness he showed her always made her want to just fall into his arms. Would it really be so wrong? Yeah, yeah, jailbait and all that, but Remi wouldn’t hurt her. She knew that in the depths of her soul.

“Tell you what, Aria. I know my work takes me away a lot… I mean that’s why Tatiana and I are living here rather than on our own, so she’s not left alone when I’m working.”

Inside she growled. She really didn’t care about Tatiana or her inability to live on her own, but she would always be eternally grateful for it as it had brought Remi into her life.

“But my point is, whenever I’m in town, you and me, we have a date.”

Her heart skipped about ten beats and her entire soul lit up.

“I’ll make sure we get to do something nice, something you’ll like. And Aria, I want you to promise me something.” He looked at her in his most stern way.

“Wh-what?” Her nerves suppressed some of the high he gave her and her belly clenched in the weirdest combination of fear and desire.

“That you’ll tell me honestly how you are. Because I really have come to care about you and I know you don’t have a lot of people you can count on in your world. I’d like to be one of them, though.” He smiled lopsidedly and adorably at her.

He wanted to be a person she could count on?

He cared about her?

Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!

She tried so hard to keep from lighting up like a Christmas tree, but she couldn’t hold back the great big smile that broke across her face.

“See, that’s what I like to see.” He stood up and reached for her, pulling her to her feet in front of him. “You have much too pretty a smile not to share it with the world.”

He was still holding her hands and her heart was soaring. Never in her life had there been a better moment then this and it was entirely possible there never would be again so she intended to drink it all in.

“Smile for me, Aria. If for no other reason than to make me happy, always smile for me.”

He squeezed her hands.

Her breath caught.

For just a split second she thought, maybe, just maybe he saw her as a young woman and not a dumb kid.

Could it be possible?

Did Remi see her as more?

She blinked up into his eyes and though she didn’t want to push her luck, she wanted nothing more in that moment than for him to kiss her. It would be her first kiss and she couldn’t think of a better person to receive that from than him.

She breathed in and closed her eyes.

Remi’s fingers brushed back the tendrils of Aria’s hair and she heard herself sigh.

“You are too sweet for your own good, Aria.”

It was hot in the truck, stuffy, without the benefit of air movement, and with closed eyes, all her senses seemed heightened. She heard the gulls outside and in the distance she thought she could maybe hear the shore. The spicy scent of his cologne infiltrated her, the touch of his fingers along her temple, his breath in her hair as he exhaled, it all combined into an intoxicating mix making her drunk, maybe even bold.

She parted her lips and swore she felt him, just a brush, so light she wasn’t sure it was real.

“Remeeeeeeee.” The whine came from just outside the truck and made her jump.

Jolted back to the present and to reality, her eyes fluttered open. He was still staring at her, but as soon as their eyes connected, he released her and looked away.

“What is it, Tatiana?” He moved to the opening at the truck end and leaned out.

They exchanged some words, something about her nails and how moving was not in her repertoire. Aria just rolled her eyes even as they filled with tears. She grabbed a smaller box, it wasn’t hers, but right then she just wanted camouflage to get out of there.

She pushed past the couple and rushed to the house while Remi examined Tatiana’s nails.

Stepping over the threshold she got shivers but ignored them. There were cobwebs everywhere and the floorboards creaked as she stepped on them. The house was dark, as half the windows were still boarded up. It didn’t look as if anyone had lived there in all the years they’d been away. She couldn’t say for sure, it’s not like her mother would ever divulge such personal information, or any information at all really.

The house smelled dusty and there was another scent, one she couldn’t quite recognize. She placed the box she carried on the old window seat in the front parlor. The house was big enough for all of them in theory, but she couldn’t imagine any space giving her enough distance from Tatiana.

She looked around the room trying so hard to recall what the space had been. She remembered the color blue, white painted wood, large furniture. Although she’d been quite small then, she remembered being in her daddy’s arms, he was swinging her in a wide circle, around and around and she was laughing like crazy.

She smiled, pleased to have recalled the moment, but then the sadness swept in.

Why did he leave?

Better question, why had he left her?

“Aria!” Her mother’s shrill voice echoed throughout the space.

“What mother?” She groaned.

Her mother came from behind the stairs, wearing white linen pants and a peach colored tank in some kind of shiny fabric. She wore full make-up, had her pale blonde hair pulled back into a rather severe ponytail, and wore a necklace made up of a series of four large gold circles and her spiky heels clacked along the wood floorboards.

Perfect ensemble for moving day, mom.

“Is this all you brought in?” Nadine gave the box she’d left on the window seat a small push then turned with her ordinary exasperated expression. “Look, Tatiana isn’t feeling well, Remi has to leave by four and I can only do so much here. I really need you to pick up the slack and you bring in one box?”

“Where’s your husband?” Aria wasn’t ordinarily so flippant, but her emotions were raw at this point.

“He’s a busy man, Aria, and I don’t appreciate your tone one bit. You are a child there is no way you could appreciate the complexities of an adult life. Tallon has left this move in my hands and I will not disappoint him. You need to stop whining about every little nuance of your life and focus on the big picture here.”

She felt kicked in the gut.

“And the big picture would be what, exactly?” She asked, barely able to hold back the hurt and anger that was rapidly rising to the surface.

“Today, it would be that I have a task to accomplish and I will not accept failure! Tallon values privacy above all else and he’s trusted all of this to me so as to keep any nosey movers out of our business, but he will be back in the morning and I intend for him to find a real home and not a dusty haunted house!”

Aria folded her arms tight across her chest and tried taking even slow breaths to ease the pain cutting through her.

“And that’s ‘you-speak’ for you expect me to do all this?” Sometimes she wondered how hard the act of getting emancipated would be.

“Of course not! I wouldn’t trust such an important thing as this to you alone! I will instruct you every step of the way. You won’t have to make any decisions. I just need you to…”

“Fine, Mom.” She didn’t want to hear the rest.

Fifty-five weeks. Fifty-five weeks.

Flirtatious giggling drew her attention to the entry where Remi and Tatiana fell through the door together. He had his arms wrapped around her and his mouth on her neck. They fell into the wall and moved further down the hall and out of sight. A moment later she heard a door slam.

Her heart tore.

He wasn’t hers. He would never be hers. Still, how was she going to bear having to witness that at any given moment?

Her mother groaned. “Well, there goes any help we may have gotten out of them.”

She flung her hands in the air and walked towards the front door.

“Come on Aria. I need your help now more than ever.” As she walked out of the house she heard her mother mutter. “Why does it all always fall on me?”

Aria drew a breath and pushed all her thoughts, dreams and feelings as far to the back as she could. Arguing with her mother would only prolong her torment. She had an entire house to unpack and set up all by herself and she best get to it. It was going to be a long day.