A/N: A short chapter, but an important chapter!!!!
SCARLETT:
I sit in the kitchen, the entire counter cluttered with designs, model photos, and work. I rub my temples looking at the layout, my eyes feeling like they're crossing from all the work that's been done since seven this morning. Me, awake at seven in the morning? Practically unheard of. Literally never in my life can I remember actually waking up that early by my own will, and drinking a cup of coffee... yes it was black, not a single sprinkle of creamer. I got up, and I started working.. Here's the craziest part. I was up before Harry was. He's awake now. Since last week he's been slowly but surely tracking down every single email that Candace had sent out. He's working on that now.
"Hello. Yes, my name is Harry Styles. I'm the director of.. Alright good, I'm glad you know how I am. I'm calling you today because I've been made aware of an email exchange between someone in your line with a woman named Candace- Yes, her. I'm calling to inform you that the designs, or ideas she had sent to you, and your team are in fact stolen, and copyrighted under someone else. By me actually. Me and my intern. Yes. Yes. I'd like to apologize first off, and second I would like to ask you to pull whatever work you are doing with that design, and remove it from your ideas box all together." He paces behind me, I can hear his voice travel. He falls silent, and I turn around to look at him.
"That's not an option." He stands still, looking straight forward, his brows pinched together as he does. "If you choose to continue I will sue you for all your worth, and will collect your name, and your companies name, as well as the brand you are hoping to start and I will put you on high pressure with Vogue to remove the line, which will remotely black ball you from this industry altogether... I suggest you get your own ideas, or quit this business altogether.." He pauses again, and nods his head. "Yep. Understood. Glad we could come to an agreement." He nods, and I smirk. He gets incredibly tense at times like this.
"Why do you look like you're about to pop a blood vessel?" Sierra looks at Harry as she enters the room. Her attention turns my way, and she stops in her tracks. "Oh I see. I'm still sleeping. I must be sleeping right?" She asks Harry, practically ignoring me.
"Why would you be sleeping?" I ask.
"Because you're awake... and working.. You're awake before me? This can't be real." She continues to walk into the kitchen, and I roll my eyes as I turn back to the scatter of papers.
"It is real. My show is in a week. He set the date. We have a location. We have models. I feel like.. God I feel like I can't even breathe." I admit, speaking the last part under my breath.
"Oh, well if you told me you were stressing out over something you can't completely control I would have known it was real from the start." She speaks as she comes up next to me. I roll my eyes, and hear a chuckle behind me.
"Harry, it's not funny. Stop laughing." I don't look at him as I speak to him.
"I think it's funny because she knows you like I know you, and she's right. You've done everything you can. You've done an amazing job too. You have it all mapped out. Your range of models is impressive, and they're all incredibly attractive. The only work that needs to be done is on my end." He tells me.
"It needs to be perfect." I tell both of them.
"It won't be." Harry speaks out, and I groan.
"Go away.. If you're just going to stress me out more, then go away." I raise my eyebrows at him, and he takes my shoulders, turning me towards him.
"I'm not trying to stress you out. I'm preparing your brain for the fact that I know it won't be perfect. Mistakes happen. Things go wrong, but it will be amazing. Don't expect perfection.. Please." He looks at me, and I finally let my eyes find his. "You look like you're about to cry." He speaks out, and I sigh, my lips shaking as I do.
"She is, you go away." Sierra points to the stairs.
"Well why do I have to leave?" He asks.
"Because I told you to?" Sierra shakes her head in confusion.
"Is it my fault? Did I make you cry?" He asks, looking at me.
"No you didn't. She made herself cry, now go away so I can talk to her. Work upstairs, I know you have more calls to make. Go away." Sierra gets up, actually turning him around, and pushing him towards the stairs now. He sighs, and moves himself up the stairs, ignoring the fact that he just got kicked out of his own living room. The door shuts, and Sierra turns to me.
"He didn't have to leave. I'm fine." I blink away tears, and turn back around to my work.
"Why are you upset?" She asks me, and I shake my head.
"I'm not upset." I lie.
"I have cancer you can't lie to someone with cancer that's literally the quickest way to go to hell." She tells me.
"I would have to believe in hell for that to matter to me." I tell her.
"Okay well... Fuck, just tell me what's wrong Scarlett." She sits next to me, leaning over the counter into my personal space.
"Sierra I feel like this shouldn't be happening.." I admit.
"What?" She asks, and I motion in front of me.
"This. All of this. This." I motion around me to the apartment. "None of this should be happening because I didn't do anything to get all of this. I got lucky, and that shouldn't happen. That's not fair, that's not right. It's not... There's a catch.. Or I don't know. This feels so wrong to me. I don't feel like I deserve this, like I should have this.." I tell her, feeling dumb as I explain it.
"Why do you feel like that?" She asks me.
"Like this is wrong? I don't know it's just a feeling. It's just sitting at the front of my brain, and resting on my chest, and it's heavy and annoying." I tell her.
"You're saying you don't deserve something that you have worked incredibly hard for.. You went to college for it. You went into severe debt for it. Hell you got assaulted by your old boss for this. I remember your senior year of college you would be working so hard on sketches that you would blister your hands from holding your pencils too tight.. I remember I would go to bed, and you would be awake in the same spot still working when I woke up." She tells me.
"But that's-"
"I'm not done.. I remember when no one else was there for me, you believed me when I said something was wrong. I remember that you would go to every appointment with me. You would stay at the hospital, and work even harder to make up for the work you missed. You were a full time student working a job when I couldn't, and you picked up every area I slacked in while also being a good sister, and doing everything you could, and through that you also had your heart broken by not only him." She points up the stairs. "But our parents too." She tells me.
"Yeah I get that but that's not what I'm talking about." I tell her.
"I know what you're talking about. You're talking about money. You're talking about the fact that you think this is a handout because our stupid fucking parents programmed it in our heads that we never take things from people, that we work our ass off for whatever we want, and need in life which is ironic considering how much money they took from you. Because it's incredibly hard for you to unlearn what they programmed in your mind." She tells me, and I'm silent now, her words sinking in, and clicking in my head.
"Sierra..." I shake my head, and she shrugs.
"I get it.. It makes sense. I just need you to realize that you have worked hard, and you deserve this. You deserve the help you're getting, and you deserve to have your own line. You deserve the relief. You deserve it." She tells me.I just sigh, my head still reeling.
"Can I paint you a picture?" She asks me, and I nod.
"Sure." I shrug.
"Scar, you remember when we used to sneak over to the neighbors house when they would leave to go out of town and swim in their pool?" She asks me, and I nod.
"We didn't swim, we would literally skinny dip." I laugh, remembering how much we used to go over there, and how they never knew about it.
"I was getting to that.. Remember how we used to feel then?" She asks.
"Yeah that was before anything ever mattered. It was just us. And it was therapeutic. It was actually fun, and.. And it was just good. That's all I can say it was good." I nod.
"So skinny dip." She tells me.
"I don't know if the people in LA would appreciate me streaking naked down the beach or in their backyard." I tell her.
"I'm not talking about literally skinny dipping. I'm saying you're resisting the current right now. You're trying your best to stay above water, you're trying so hard that you're literally not even in the water, you're looking at the water from above, just thinking about swimming in it. You're not a scared little kid anymore that's afraid to tell him how you feel. You're not afraid to stand up to your boss. You are Scarlett. So take off all the old things. Strip down to just you, be bare, be bold, and jump into the water. Just exist.. Take it off and just exist Scarlett. You don't need permission to enjoy your life.. It's your life." She tells me, and I feel a pang of guilt in my chest at the fact that I have been acting this way. "You are selfless, and you put a lot of work in with no reward, and I just want you to live in this. Exist in this because it's real, and it's deserved, and it's happening. Harry loves you, and he's real too." She tells me.
"Skinny Dipping through life.." I speak out, and she nods.
"It's an incredibly weird expression that barely anyone will ever understand, but it's perfect, and it's true, and I need you to do that." Sierra tells me, and I find myself smiling.
"God I love you." I pull her into my chest, hugging her to my body, and she hesitates before hugging me back.
"I love you.." She hugs me, and then squeezes me tighter, her other arm coming around to make it a full hug. We sit together, and I don't let go, or loosen my grip on my sister. I'm careful as I hold her, but I don't lessen the hold I have. I squeeze my eyes tight as I hug her. I have Harry. I know that I have him and that he has been incredible as he has come back into mine and Sierra's life. He has done everything in his power to fix everything between us and he has but throughout everything. Sierra has been a constant in my life since the day she was born. She has been the thing that has kept me grounded. She made me grow up, she walked with me through the hardest parts of my life.
Sierra was my mom when I needed a mom. She was my little sister, and sometimes she was my older sister. Sierra held my hair when I was sick to my stomach and probably on the verge of alcohol poisoning. Sierra quizzed me when I had tests coming up, and Sierra and I screamed at each other when she would steal something from me that I had just made and barely had the chance to wear it. Sierra slept in my passenger seat when we left home, and had nowhere to go. Sierra slept in my bed, and held my hand, and took care of me when Harry broke my heart. Sierra has never ceased to be honest, and she has never in her life ran away from me when things got too hard. Sierra has been the only person in my life that has never given up on me, even when I know she wanted to.
I hug her tighter, feeling a pull inside of my chest. I tell myself to not go there, to not think about the fact that she's sick, to not think about what's coming soon enough for not me but her, and everyone else too. I change the route of my thoughts every time I start to think of the surgery, but I can't sometimes. I can't stop thinking about losing my sister, and the thought shatters me. It tears me up. The thought of losing the most important person in my life makes me feel like there's no point to anything I'm doing at all.. So I don't think about it. I tell myself to stop.
"This is going to be the best moment.. Seeing all of this come to life. Just being here for the process is all I've wanted Scarlett.." She tells me, finally pulling away from me.
"It's just hard to believe.." I admit.
"Can I come down now?" Harry yells from the top of the stairs.
"Yes, come back." I smile, and he comes back down the stairs.
"I need to tell you something, and since Sierra is here this is my only window." He tells me.
"Why does Sierra have to be here?" I ask.
"Because she can calm you down if I can't." He admits. "There's going to be a lot... a lot of important people at this show. Celebrities. Designers. Reporters.. Everyone." He tells me, and I nod slowly. Skinny dipping. I look at Sierra, and shrug.
"Skinny Dipping." I tell him, and turn back to my work, starting to line it up, piling it up the order it lays in.
"What does that even mean? Scarlett, did you hear me?" He asks, and I nod.
"I did hear you, but I'm choosing to take it off, and exist. It can't bother me if I don't let it sit on my shoulders." I tell him, and he stares at me, his lips parted in shock. He blinks his eyes a few times, and then looks at Scarlett.
"What did you say to her?" He asks, and all she does is laugh. "No I'm serious, is she okay? Why is she talking about streaking?" He asks her.
"You don't need to know. All you need to know is when things get tense, all you have to remind her of is that. Skinny dipping. She gets it. I get it. That's all that matters." She tells him, and he looks between us, his eyes resting on me. I shrug, and then nod. It's a sister thing. That's all it needs to be.
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A/N: I KNOW THIS WAS SHORT BUT IVE ALREADY STARTED THE NEXT CHAPTER!!!
I promise it is coming super super super soon! I swear it!!!
I love y'all, so much!!!! *virtual hugs*