✔ DRUNK words, SOBER thoughts ✖ hemmings au

36: Family Matters

LUKE.

Ari couldn't stop crying.

If there was one thing that meddled with my heart more than anything, it would be seeing my mum and my close friends in complete shambles. Seeing Ari in great pain, literally feeling her heart thump on full throttle and hearing her piercing wails rattle in my ears, was an experience I wished to forget. It was like slow motion the way everything unfolded. One second Ari was upright and the next her knees buckled, her body plummeting towards the concrete with her fragile heart falling with her. The tears fell like a storm that wouldn't cease and her mind was like a 100MPH tornado of thoughts that wouldn't slow down. 6-year-old Brayson Cole received his angel wings tonight and for that, Ari couldn't stop crying.

"Ari, calm down for me," I softly cooed, rocking Ari back and forth. She sat in the fetal position in between my legs, my back pressed up against the base of the couch in the Quiroz household. I held onto Ari tightly, making sure she knew that I was there with her.

"Here's some water," Mia placed a cold bottle of water on the coffee table before me, "my mom is brewing some tea."

I nodded my head, keeping my concentration of the fragile girl in my arms. Mia took a seat next to me, reaching over to gently stroke her sister's hair. Ari let out a violent cough, her lungs rattling from the amount of crying she had done in the last thirty minutes.

"Shh, please calm down," I pleaded, my voice at a whisper. I felt Ari's hands clutch onto my sweater, her fingers digging into the material like she was holding onto it for her dear life. "I'm here baby girl, I'm right here."

"How is she doing?" Mrs. Quiroz approached us, placing a tray of hot tea on the coffee table. She looked down at the scene before her, woe in her eyes as she witnessed her daughter convulse in despair.

"Still not well," I reported. I delicately rubbed Ari's shoulder with my thumb, hoping the small gesture would help ebb the ache and halt the tears.

"She never cries this hard," Mrs. Quiroz informed, taking a seat on the love seat off to the side. "The last time was when her father passed."

I felt pang hit my chest, feeling more sick to imagine Ari and Mia losing their father. Mine was a horrible man who treated my mum like dirt before walking away from us-- he didn't deserve any love from neither my mother nor I. Ari and Mia's dad however, seemed like an incredible man who deeply loved his family. Like Brayson, Mr. Quiroz was taken off the Earth with an unthinkable force; succumbing to sickness as their loved ones watched. My jerk of a dad was probably having the time of his life and as cruel as it sounds, I wish he was the one taken off this world instead of Brayson and Mr. Quiroz.

We all sat in a comfortable silence for the next thirty minutes, Ari gradually fizzling out of the severe weeping that plagued her. The fireplace in the living room was on, the firewood crackling ever so often in the most pacifying way. After a while Mrs. Quiroz began to hum a very familiar tune that I couldn't quite put my finger on. It wasn't until Mia started to softly sing, did I comprehend what the song was.

"I'll be your crying shoulder, I'll be love's suicide. I'll be better when I'm older, I'll be the greatest fan of your life..."

"I'll Be?" I questioned, darting my eye back and forth between Mia and Mrs. Quiroz.

"Yes," Mrs. Quiroz nodded, "it was a family favorite. Mia and Ari's father used to sing it to them when they were younger as a lullaby before bed or whenever they would get scared about something."

"Then when Ari and I got older," Mia continued, as I shifted my attention to her, "we learned the song too and we'd literally sing it anytime we wanted and in different ways."