Niall's P.O.V

I slipped off my t-shirt. Ellie grabbed her spoon and opened the tub of ice cream.

"Ready?" She asks.

Ellie's P.O.V

I feel my phone start to vibrate in my back pants pocket. "Hold on." I say to Niall as I pull it out and glance at the already brightened screen. Harry. The highlighted name shows in front of a picture of Harry intensely staring at my phones camera flashed along with it. His contact picture, actually.

"Harry's FaceTiming me." I explain to Niall.

"Yeah?" I answer the phone, quickly slapping a smile on my face.

"I miss you so much. I just wanna talk... If you're not too busy." Harry quickly struggles to find the right words.

"Yeah. Anything for you, HazBear." I smirk at his new nickname.

"Ok ElBear." He says, obviously trying to mock me by copying my nickname.

"Would you two shut up and quit with the names?" Niall asks, sitting up and pressing his hands into my mattress.

"There you are! Is Liam there too? Loui is gonna be pissed when he finds out you guys didn't bring him to see Ellie with you. You shouldn't have gone without telling us in the first place." Harry starts to lecture him.

"Harry? Why do I hear Ellie's voice coming from your room? Did you kidnap the poor girl?" Louis rushes into the room in a pretend attempt to save me.

"Zayn! It's Ellie!" He shouts down the hall after rushing to the door once he saw my face on Harry's phone.

"Ellie! Where?" I hear the front door slam open and mentally face palm myself. The poor guy thinks I'm already back. Too bad I still have a few hours left here.

"Tell him I'm still in LA." I groan once Louis glances over at me.

"Will do." He chuckles.

"Zayn-" He starts only to be cut off by Harry.

"Zayn, she's not here yet." He laughs.

"You idiots. Of course she's not. I told you so." Zayn strides in, trying to recover from his embarrassment by playing it cool.

"Is Liam there too? Let's just have one of our signature weird talks that we always have with each other." Louis asks.

I thrust my phone into Niall's hands and rush downstairs, bringing a confused Liam to the door.

"Why do people keep dragging me up here without telling me why or what's going on?" Liam pouts.

I ignore him and glance over at Niall who is busy digging in to my cotton candy ice cream. That little mother trucker... I snatch the tub from his hands and grab my own spoon from my back pocket as Liam side-eyes me. I always keep a spoon in my back pocket... Just in case I need to deflect a certain someone.

"Why are you eating ice cream without me?" Louis pouts once he can fully see the blue and pink tub between Niall and I.

Kenzie bursts through the door. "Hey. I heard ice cream so... Here I am." She smirks, coolly gliding over to us. "Just kidding. I just got off the phone with some... Friends, and I wanted to see what you two were up to. But now it's more like you six." She snickers.

"Hi Kenzie!" Harry politely waves to her.

"Hey Harry." She mimics.

"You two would make a good couple." She whispers in my ear, making me almost spit out the spoonful of ice cream I had just stuffed into my mouth.

"By the way... I'll need to steal Patch back from you once I get back to London. It's not that I don't trust you boys to watch him and take care of him. It's just that I need him back. And that I don't trust you with him." She gently chuckles.

"Yeah Haz. Why don't you get him ready to be picked up?" I hold back a chuckle, knowing that Harry knows about as much on Patch's current location as I do.
"Ok." He says, eyeing Kenzie.

"Let's just keep playing but we can include the boys this time." I quietly say to Niall. Liam is too busy talking about jamb, a new mixture of lamb and jam that they had just imagined, to notice the two of us talking.

"Yeah. But we could sell it in big glass jars. It would be easier to-" I stopped Liam mid-sentence. "How about we play Twitter Truth or Dare?" I suggest, quickly remembering that they still didn't know about my YouTube identity.

"Yeah!" Zayn excitedly screeches.

The three boys disappear and my mom's contact picture and name replace them.

"Call them back." I brush Niall's shoulder with my own, as a signal.

"Hey mom." I sigh. I realize that I should still try to sound a bit harsh... She can't take back what she called me and I don't plan on being nice about her calling me a... Curry. That's not even my last name anymore and I can't do anything to change who Father was and how he acted.

"Hi sweetie!" She happily chirps back.

"I just wanted to tell you that Janelle and Jason had their baby two weeks ago and I thought you might like to visit them while you're still in America." She says.

My brother, Jason, lives in New York with his wife, Janelle, haven't seen me since they were married back in 2005. It's been 5 years since I've seen my brother by blood. And Liam hasn't even met him.

"Jason wants to see... Me?" I'm almost surprised at the words leaking out of my own mouth. Why wouldn't my brother want to see me?

"I'll call him and tell him I'm visiting." I say before hanging up and dialing the unfamiliar number that belongs to Jason.

"Hey Jase..." I say once he picks up.

"Ellie? Is that you? How are you? Where have you been? We should get together soon!" He hurriedly says.

"Are you busy tomorrow? I'm in LA for VidCon and I was just thinking I could drop by to see you and Jan..." I mumble the last few words.

"I had a minor thing planned but I would cancel anything for you! Are you bringing mom too? Has dad been bothering you two lately?" He rams me with questions.

"Cool it Jase. I'll meet you at your house tomorrow. It's the same one isn't it?" I ask.

"Yeah. The same house I've lived in since I moved in with Jen." I can almost hear his smile.

"Well... I've gotta go clean up and tell Jen to get the twins ready to see you tomorrow-" I quickly cut him off.

"Twins!? You never told me you had twins!" I excitedly screech, earning a few confused looks from Niall and Liam.