| Annalise Lauren |
"My Biggest Competitor"
All my life, I had always been compared to someone. Whether it was my older sister, or it was the girl that had beaten me at a competition, I was always compared to someone. I was never good enough for anyone. Not my coaches, not my friends, not my family. No one.
But now, that I looked back on my life, the biggest competitor I had was the girl that I believed was my sister. I didn't understand and I never will understand, how our lives became a game with one another. Who had the prettier dress on or who had more time out on the ice, practicing with a well known coach.
I don't know when it became like that. It felt like it had been my whole life, and maybe it had. In all reality, my whole entire life, my existence, had been a complete lie, and no one had the decency to tell me that. No wonder it felt so right to call the people that were supposed to be my parents, Hannah and Jameson. They were not my parents, as far as I was aware.
So all the slaps on the cheek and the wrist, all the cat calling and words that have been said over the years, it was all for nothing. There was no purpose, as I was never even there daughter. Now I had nowhere to go. I was just sitting here, while the only person I kind of knew, was dead asleep, high on drugs from his surgery last night.
Looking down at my big brother from my sitting position that I had managed from having his arm wrapped around my waist, made me gather an understanding of who he was. Of the boy that I had grown up knowing was always going to be better than me. That he would eventually have the slightest chance to take over from our parents obsession with our dead siblings. But now, they weren't our siblings, as they were the true Laurens, not us.
To some degree, everything made a little sense. I don't know how we were roped into it all, but I had gone from watching River and Riley being the stars of the shows and games, to it being myself and Aiden, but we were never good enough. We weren't the originals, so we were always compared to them, as we were just filling in for when they would never come back from the dead.
I was only a fill in for what they had lost and knew that they would never get back. That was all I was made for. Taking a closer look at my brother, I realized just how peaceful his breaths were. The slow rise and fall of his chest, as his lips were not in a smile nor were they smirking. His eyebrows weren't furrowed, as his face looked entirely relaxed.
For a long time, I was finally seeing my brother having some peace in being relaxed. He wasn't running, he wasn't running from something or someone. He was just here, sleeping beside me, as his chest rose and fell, while nothing seemed to matter to him. And maybe nothing mattered right now, but I knew that when he woke up, it would.
I always knew him as someone to always be on overdrive. Hearing him leaving and coming in early and late, training his body into the ground. If he wasn't home, he was out at a game or he was down at the local gym, usually alone. If it was the offseason, he was running the football pitch, gathering speed, or he was running laps around the yard.
We very rarely went on holidays because of Aiden, and what used to be River but was now Aiden, and I was grateful for that. I was grateful that I could watch from where I was, how far my brother was pushing himself to get himself there. He didn't care what other people thought about how hard he was working.
The only issue that came with all of this, was his girlfriend. I knew that she tried to tie him down, and my brother was a hard one to do that too. His first and foremost goal is hockey. It has always been that way. He just wants to succeed in hockey, and then he will think about everything that races around whatever is in his head.
A girlfriend is not going to stop him, and I really hope that Ashley isn't going to do that. I really hope that Aiden doesn't get involved in the dating schemes like my sister did, which ruined what used to be our mother, as it takes away there focus from what she wanted. It felt like Hannah Lauren was living through us, as she could never succeed at the things that we did when she was our age.
A shiver ripped through me, running down my spine at that thought. Why would she force us into being the best, knowing that she had never made it in the first place, so she had to force it onto other people, those same people that believed that she was there mother and what she did was the right thing. That that was what mothers did to their children that decided they wanted to be athletes.
But what happens if I never got a choice? The person that I thought was my sister, got the choice, while I just had to follow her. Whatever she did, I did. I never got a choice. The sports she did, I did. The school she went to, I did. Even the subjects I picked was what she had done before me, even though they weren't always what I liked doing.
I never complained when we sat at her competitions for hours, but if she sat at mine, no one ever stayed for the whole thing or they weren't ever there on time, sometimes missing my performances. It was like I never got a say in anything because I wasn't the child that they cared about. I wasn't related, so nothing that happened to me ever mattered.
I wasn't the golden daughter, only the replacement.
"Ana?" a door opening and a voice questioning me, made me turn away from the area on the wall that I had been staring at as my thoughts aimlessly ran through my head, like they were never going to stop. What shocked me the most was that I knew this person should still be in bed, not standing up like this.
I was grateful for the distraction with a nickname that no one had called me in what felt like years. "Angus, what are you doing up? You should be in bed" worry and concern flooded my brain for the boy that had a bandage wrapped around his head and was using crutches to be standing. He most definietly should not be standing up with the severity of his concussion.
This boy was seriously going to be the death of me one day.
"Well Alistair told me what had happened, and I couldn't stay in my room thinking about how miserable you must be feeling. I don't know what it feels like to know that the people who are your parents, aren't really your parents" for someone as blunt as Angus, it didn't feel like it was supposed to be a harsh blow.
"I'm fine really. You need to go back to bed" slowly unwrapping Aiden's arm from my waist, I quickly moved a pillow to where I was, before climbing out of the bed. Wincing, as my bones creaked and cracked from not moving, I moved over towards Angus, who was biting his lip as his eyebrows were furrowed in pain. He should not be in here, standing in his condition.
Reaching around gently, I moved an arm off his crutch and around my shoulders, which was difficult, as I was much shorter than the 6 foot something ice hockey player. At the thought of resting his weight on my tiny body, he immediately pulled back, almost stumbling and falling over backwards. "No, Ana, don't. I can do it" he reached for the crutch in my hand, but I didn't let him.
"No, let me help you" I knew that he was going to be stubborn. He always had been this way. He never asked for help. I knew this from the amount of bantering that had happened between the two of us at the ice rink. Angus Armani did not just give up and give in easily. That was not who he was, and that was not the person I had grown up knowing as my brothers best friend.
When he had moved away, I kind of lost that feeling I had for him as a little girl. I knew he hated me back then, but for some reason, now that he has come back, even if it was only for a year or so, almost 2 years, it feels like he doesn't hate me anymore. That he sees me differently to how he did then, and I see him in a different light.
Obviously, every girl at school had a crush on him or my brother, and I hate to admit it, but I did too. He would tease me if he got the chance, but now, that teasing changed. It wasn't the same as it used to be, before he moved away. I was just probably thinking to much into it now though. He could never like a stupid little girl like me. Plus, I was only his best friends little sister. I was no one special to anyone.
"Angus, what are you doing up?" Alistair entered the room, bags around his shoulders that I knew were mine, which made guilt flood through my system. He had gone back to where no one should ever go. "I just came to see Ana and Aiden. Plus I was bored and no one was there to talk to me" it almost sounded like Angus was a whiny little child, but that wasn't like him. Aiden Armani did not whine when he didn't get what he wanted.
He would rather push people out of the way and be angry then whine and cry. He would say that he was too mature or too old to do that. This was not him. It was probably just the drugs and medicine still in his system. "I was just helping him back into his room as he shouldn't be standing" I muttered, hoping that this didn't look bad.
"Annalise, go back to bed. It's late. I can deal with this one here" I almost felt bad, but Alistair's small curve of his lips as he reached over to take the arm of Angus' that I was still holding, made it wash out of my system. "What's going on in here party people?" another person entered the room, there happy energy immediately brightening the room.
A small smile crossed my features as Archer entered the room, coffees in hand. He always knew how to brighten a room when it was dull. "I'm taking Angus back to his room. Get Annalise back into bed with Aiden" and with that, I watched as Alistair almost practically lifted his slightly shorter brother off the floor, with complaints from Angus, while I stood there watching.
Archer's mood immediately softened when he looked at me, as he coaxed my tired body back in beside Aiden, as he moved the pillow for me. Hitting the pillow beside my brother, who was still warm as he subconsciously wrapped his arms back around me, I turned to Archer as he pulled the sheets up over us.
"Thank you for everything, Archer"
I hope understood what I meant.
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thoughts? xx