"WHY ARE YOU HERE THEN?"
"Dean told me that the day after you saw me pregnant, and after father-in-law told you that it was a girl, you left the villa and went to buy lots of baby things, and even a big teddy bear for Cindy. Even though you hate me, you were already happy and excited for my baby. That alone caught me off guard, but when Dean told me you were making a technological baby toy programmed to play songs that will help Cindy sleep, I just… broke off crying. I felt really bad for cursing you for talking to me like that."
I don't know how to feel about that.
Her soft hands caressed my legs that were still resting in her lap, "Even though you don't have a good relationship with the family here, you always go out of the way to be the best aunt all of children could possibly ask for. That's really kind and lovely of you. And I believe it's one of the few things everyone here agrees with when it comes to you."
"That and the fact that I am weird."
She giggled, "Yes. That too. But, can I be honest for once?"
"I'm not holding you."
Marie-Estella stayed silent for some instants, as if trying to prepare herself to say whatever is it that she wants to tell me. "Back in school, I was envious of you. I was envious out of my mind. Even though people picked on you, you didn't seem to care. I did all I could to become the queen of the school and get all the attention, since I craved that because my parents always neglected me, but the minute you jumped classes because of your brilliant brain, you took that from me."
Uh… what?
"Yes, people kept picking on you, but everyone who did that, was moved by envy. Like me. You acted like you didn't care about shit, and you got everything. You were the top student of all the entire school, even on all of your advanced classes with the older students, you were the top one. I remember how you would discuss in class with that weird Korean student who was your partner in ice-skating, as if you would die if you didn't win an argument and proved you were right," that made me feel my face burn again.
"Rhys Choi."
She chuckled, "Yes. That boy. And you would always win. He always looked frustrated and angry as if he was about to behead you for your stubbornness and by how insufferable you were on always being right."
I scoffed, "I was right in the end though."
"See? That confidence of yours always made me insecure. It didn't matter how much I picked and bullied you, you would always keep that sneer on your annoyingly beautiful face. You were so beautiful it hurt. Pale, with long wavy black hair, dark blue eyes, and a beautiful body even when you hadn't fully matured. It made me angry, because I was a year older and didn't have all of that. And you weren't just smart, you were talented and had incredible physical abilities. Always the 1st in all the classes, even in gastronomy and music, my two favorite classes."
"Yeah, I was always the best."
The woman gasped, "And what made me even more angry back there, was that I had seen how great you were in taekwondo and karate, again, the best student. But you never, never, fought back physically. It was as if we weren't worth your effort, so you let us do all of that, and only talked back. Hah, the way you cursed us like you were superior to us, always got on my nerves too."
A smile took over my lips, "It wasn't like that. I really wanted to beat your asses back. However, doing so would taint my perfect record and would make it difficult for me to get into MIT if I had history of physically abusing people. I couldn't let that happen."
"You were a child, damn it. With no cells of impulsivity in your gorgeous body. It made me angrier, because we didn't have that self control. We couldn't help but pick on you because of our envy. And we always thought that you were like that for being spoiled by your parents, since your siblings also picked on you."
The only ones who spoiled me were my grandparents. "You really thought that? You thought what? That my siblings were envious of me? You know how stupid that fucking sounds?"
"Everybody thought that, Elizabeth-Freya. Everybody. Especially because taking in consideration the talented genius you always were, believing you were the favorite because of your achievements were the most obvious point for all of us. Since you never really talked to anyone in school about it," and why would I?
The only person I wanted to talk to loathed the shit out of me and avoided me. No one else interested me.
"But… it was only when I came to the family, that I realized how damn wrong we all were. I crave everyone attention in school because my parents neglected me and I was an only child. But you had the attention in school and didn't want it, even though not only your parents discarded you aside and only cared about your siblings, as the only sibling who kind of cared about you was Dean. And that's… why I fell for him. He kind of hated me in the beginning because of my story with you, but it all happened so fast."
That took me totally off guard. I sat down abruptly recoiling my legs, "What? Dean hated you? Why didn't I know about that?"
Her caramel eyes stared at me, and she played with her long blonde hair, "You never let any of us tell you about it, did you? But yes, he despised me for bullying you and all when I began working on the CMM Conglomerate a couple of years ago. It was kind of a hate-to-love relationship. In the beginning he felt like crap for being attracted to me, but then he threw all of that aside, saying that you would be able to understand."
I scoffed, "Well, he was wrong."
"Yes. He crucified himself for a long time because of it, you know? He used to say that he didn't regret being with me, but that cost you and him your bond, and that he felt guilty because now you probably felt like you only had your grandparents in the family. I, too, felt like crap. I had no idea your life here with your family was so hard. I didn't knew they treated you like this, and it all confused me more because you didn't act like an attention-seeker like I did. It was like… you had lost all the hope in having people on your side."