Bad Apple

Chapter Eighteen

A/N: I've got this one up quickly so I'm sorry if there's more errors than usual, please let me know if you spot any! Dedicated to vintagelanterns, a new reader =)

Thanks xxx

The day before we were due to fly home, I was still in a dilemma. Marigold wouldn’t hear how well her second audition had gone for a few days so I couldn’t use that as any sort of determiner. She was still acting as though moving to New York was a serious possibility whatever happened but I didn’t see why she would leave the UK where there was still work for her if she didn’t have any guarantees about America’s job opportunities.

I guess I was in a similar position. It was just a whole lot more complicated.

“Thinking about Ethan?” Anika rolled over in her bed and looked over at me, lying in mine.

I hadn’t even realised that she was awake. “I’m just thinking about what I’m going to do,” I said cryptically.

Anika propped herself up on her elbow. “You mean about moving here?”

I couldn’t recall ever have an emotional discussion with my sister. I wasn’t really an emotional person. Or, at least, I didn’t think I was.

“Is there something else going on?” she asked suddenly.

“What do you mean?” I pulled the covers tighter around me as though that was going to stop me from spilling my secrets.

“It’s not just about Birmingham or New York, is it? It’s not just about Mum or Dad.”

“What else would it be about?” I laughed nervously. Nerves rarely affected me.

She tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear. “Well Ethan must be a part of it.”

“He is.”

“So what’s the other part?”

I stared at her, trying to figure out what she knew. My little sister had never been a natural liar or good at hiding things. If she knew something about James, she would have said so. “Don’t be stupid, Anika. If Mum doesn’t get this role then she might not be moving here anyway. I was just thinking about what to say to Ethan.”

“Before we came here you were acting kind of…weird. I thought that maybe there was someone back home, y’know? A guy.”

I laughed her suggestion off as convincingly as I could considering my shock that Anika was more perceptive than I had ever realised. “Like who?”

“I don’t know,” she replied seriously. “But I know that you’re not just thinking about Ethan. You’re choosing between him and this other guy. Not home or here.”

How had my sweet little sister managed to get it so right? All that time I’d spent locked in my own head, thinking that my decision was really about choosing between my parents, or choosing between my home and a city I loved. All it really came down to was James or Ethan.

“Thanks, sis,” I said affectionately. I didn’t think I’d ever used any term of endearment around her before.

She smiled at me, but she didn’t ask to know who the guy from back home was and I was grateful for that. I needed time to make a decision.

James was bad for me. I knew that. And Ethan was everything that I needed. He was kind, he was loyal, and he would never hurt me. Just like my previous boyfriends. Ethan was another Simon or another Tom. Maybe James had been right. Maybe I would never really love Ethan. But wasn’t it safer to take that option than to risk everything and be with James? There wasn’t just me who stood to get hurt that way. There was my family, my dad especially.