Dear Sister

4. London

"You could've always told me that Toby was your roommate or something"

We'd been talking about Toby for the past forty minutes and I could practically see Ashton get upset with every detail about the two of us. I opened up to him about everything and let him know our plan after we retired.

"When you said settle down, did that include having a family with him", he stared right at me waiting for a reply and looking for some sort of the change in my expression. I looked away, hoping that he would get the message and he huffed loudly.

When Ashton and I moved in together, we had decided not to get off birth control right away and wait for a while till we have a baby. Two months down, I found a book filled with baby names on our nightstand which basically freaked me out. Upon talking to him about it, he came clean about how he'd been thinking about having children.

This led me to freak out, asking him for space and flying back to England to be around mum. I spent the next week helping mum with her garden and Erin with her college applications and walking to bookstores and working from there. Even though we had moved in together, I still worked for him; I needed all the information I could get. I still talked to Ashton during the week, but neither one of us brought it up.

I was out on a Friday, when I got a call from Erin, telling me how a strange man who claimed to be my boyfriend had shown up. I just knew that Ashton had flown down to see me. As soon as I got back home, I saw him sitting on the porch and my mum peering out the window. He ran down the walkway and literally lifted me off the ground in a hug.

I could see my mom's face spread into a grin as she raced to open the door. He let go of me immediately, walked to his luggage, and fished out a box, which had fragile written all over it.

China.

He'd remembered that my mum adored expensive china with flowers on them but did not have more than two sets. I had told him about my family a couple of months ago and he had still managed to remember and buy a set all for her.

He gave the box to my mum, who pulled him in for a hug and seated him in the living room. He explained how he had missed me for the past week and if I wanted him to leave he would do so right away. I didn't want him to meet my family. He was not my boyfriend; he was someone I needed to take down. I couldn't tell him to leave now, especially after mum had seated him in the living room.

I politely nodded and bent down to kiss him, before leaving the room. I found my mom making tea and putting a batch of cookies into the oven, as she gushed over Ashton. Erin was seated at the dining table with all of her homework spread out on the table. Mum served us tea and cookies in the backyard which was filled with flowers planted by her. I called out to Erin to join us in the backyard, but mum cut her off before any words could leave her mouth, telling us that she needs to write her college essays which were due by the end of the week.

Now that I thought of it, she never went this hard on me when it came to college. I peeked into the kitchen, to see her working on her essay with a blank face. I hadn't spent any time with her during my entire trip and the only conversation we had was when dad and mum were around, which was about her college.

I hadn't overlooked how much they kept reminding her that they did not have the money to send her to any major university, so she needed a scholarship no matter what. Even though I attended community college, which was practically free, mum had lent me a good chunk of money during my move. My residential cost was looked after by the services but amenities in New York were not cheap. And with the assumption that I was renting an apartment with a friend, mum snuck in some more money each month.

I tried returning the money, once my paychecks came in, but she refused to take anything from me. I decided to stash away some money as her college fund and had managed to collect quite a bit in the past couple of months. I had brought it up during dinner once and dad did not take it well. His exact words were 'we don't need your charity', which brought mum to tears, him leaving the house and not coming back till tomorrow morning.

It wasn't that Erin wasn't smart, but scoring a seat in a university with a good chemistry program was quite hard. But, I'd seen how much effort she'd put into her studies and aced all of her finals, and was sure she'd get a scholarship.

"I presume you're the guy she's been seeing for the past couple of months", mum gleamed at him and tried to get him to eat more biscuits.

"Yes ma'am", he grinned at me and held my hand below the table. This was messed up. I excused myself for a while and dialed Toby. It took me three tries till he picked up and it took me twenty seconds to explain what had happened.

He immediately called the agents planted near our apartment, only to be informed that they'd been instructed to stop the spying on the apartment by Zaira. I was seconds away from calling Zaira when Erin walked into the living room telling me to go meet mum.

I saw Ashton trying to hurl his suitcases up the stairs and immediately ran up to help him get settled into the guest room. I decided to help him arrange his clothes in the dresser and by the looks of it; he'd packed enough for at least two weeks.

I closed the door behind us and headed to open the windows when Ashton pulled me towards himself and nuzzled his head into my neck. Truth be told, I had missed his presence but I wasn't ready to admit it just yet. I pulled him to the bed and we lay there for a couple of minutes, just holding each other. I turned around and slowly kissed his lips, allowing myself to be completely consumed by him. His hands slipped under my shirt as he got on top of me.

The door swung open and I immediately pushed him off only to discover a flushed Erin near the door. She immediately turned around and I could hear her feet slam against the stairs as she ran down them. Things were getting out of hand and there was nothing I could do about it.

"If it's any consolation my father adored you and I think your visit to London is when I realized I wanted to be with you".

"Oh yeah, that's consolation for sure", he scoffed and walked away.

I watched Ashton lug a sack of coal through our backyard and onto our deck. He's stayed over for over a week and dad had finally made an effort to get to know him. They'd been out all morning fishing and spent the afternoon buying meat for the barbeque at night. What started off with just the five, was now treated as an extended invitation to the entire town to meet my new boyfriend. I walked out to the deck and saw my father washing the vegetables with a smile on his face. He waved towards me and signaled to chop them up.

The barbeque ended at around one in the morning and I had started to a freakout for the second time in a week. The neighbours had bombarded us with questions of when he's going to propose and when are we aving children. But, Ashton managed to whisk me away for a while and had a talk about why I had ran away to London and had cut of all contact for a week. We mutually agreed to put the getting engaged and having children on hold for atleast a year and a half.

The next morning I spotted my dad and Ashton taking a run around the town. They had gotten awfully close to each other through the week and seeing Ashton just fit in the house and our lives made me feel happy for the first time in ages. He stayed away from work for the whole time and accompanied me to the bookstore and took me to lunch every single day.

The last day in London was very emotional, especially for mom who would not let go of Ashton. I lugged our suitcases down the stairs when I heard some mumbling from the living room.

"Do you intend on marrying my daughter?"

"Yes sir. That was my intetbion when I first arrived in London but Anna's just not ready yet"

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"Why didn't you propose when we got back from London?"

"Oh come on, Anna. I proposed to you an year after that and you still hesitated, I didn't stand a chance in hell if I proposed to you right then", he sat down on the other corner of the room and looked up at the ceiling.

"Besides, Erin told me how you might leave me for some Zack guy you dated before me"