Bad Apple

Chapter Twenty-Five

The house, the one I’d lived in all my life, looked like that’s all it was. Just a house.

Standing on the pavement outside, I felt like somebody else. I felt like maybe I was a photographer here to snap any shot I could get of the legendary Billy Lyn.

Or maybe I was just an ordinary teenaged girl longing for a chat with her father.

Starting towards the large white front door, I took a glance up at my bedroom window. The pale lavender drapes that always let in too much light on a morning were drawn across the window as though nobody lived there anymore. It didn’t belong to the house anymore because I was no longer part of the family.

I took a deep breath and knocked delicately on the door. Delicate wasn’t normally my style but if I knocked with my usual zeal, I thought my dad would know it was me and choose not to answer it.

But it wasn’t Billy who answered my knock. Monica was standing in the hallway, her flame-red hair pulled into a scruffy ponytail.

“Cadence.” Her minimally made up face registered surprise that must have been mirrored in my own expression. “You better come in.”

I followed her into the kitchen, like a stranger entering a house for the first time.

My dad and RJ were sitting at the breakfast bar, each cradling a bottle of imported French beer, despite the early hour. The same stuff that James was drinking when there was the first glimmer of a spark between us after he caught me making that phone call on the night of my birthday.

I pushed the memory from my mind and walked to the other side of the breakfast bar, resting my hands on the stool but not sitting down.

RJ looked up at me but my dad was acting like I wasn’t even there.

“We should give you two some space.” Monica signalled to RJ to follow her out of the room.

It was just me and my dad.

“I thought you’d be with James,” he said gruffly. His voice sounded thick as though he’d done nothing but smoke and drink for the last few days.

“Have you seen James?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“I don’t want to.”

I pulled out the stool and sat down, trying to look at Dad’s face but he turned away. “Please don’t fall out with him over this.”

“Have you just come here to defend him?” he spat.

“No,” I whispered. I spread my hands out on the counter in front of me and stared at my chipped glittery nail polish. “I came to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Sorry because you think you’re grown up enough to have a relationship with a man twice your age or sorry because you didn’t tell me?”

I’d grown to hate that phrase ‘twice your age’. What did it really mean? James wouldn’t be twice my age forever. And why did everyone assume that I wasn’t grown up enough to handle the relationship? Not everything is going to last. I knew that. Entering into any relationship, age gap or not, was brave when you thought about it like that.

“You shouldn’t have found out like that.”

“So you were planning on telling me, then?”

I hesitated. What was the honest answer to that? When all this first started, I had no intention of telling anyone but things had changed since then. I had changed.

“Did you tell Karyn?” he asked suddenly.

“No, she found out.”

“How? Did she hear something when she went to see James at the hotel?”

I closed my eyes, remembering sitting in the hotel room and opening up to James. It was hard to think that Karyn was probably standing outside that room listening to our private conversation. “She must have heard us talking.”

“I’m just so worried about you, Cadence. I know James better than you do and the way he treats women…” he trailed off, looking away sadly.

“But people can change,” I insisted. I knew how much of a naïve teenager I sounded. No wonder my family couldn’t take me seriously.

“Maybe.” My dad grinned. It was brief and didn’t quite reach his eyes but at least it was a start.

“I understand why you don’t want me to be with James,” I said. Well, I thought I understood. “But I’m an adult now. You’ve got to let me make my own mistakes.”

“It’s hard you know,” he said, almost smiling again, “watching your little girl grow up.”

I reached my hand across the counter to him as though I could pull him back into our family and the four of us would be happy again. I may never know why my mum cheated on my dad, especially with a man like Vile Bruno, or what went on in their relationship but I wasn’t going to let anything damage the relationship I had with my dad.

Monica appeared in the doorway, checking that we were done with our conversation before she said, “I have something to tell you, Cady. It’s about James.” She glanced at my dad then, checking that it was okay to speak about him.

I got up from my stool and followed her out of the kitchen a little nervously. My heart beat faster, my mind thinking all sorts. I knew James had a reputation with women but I didn’t expect him to have had any sort of relationship with my best friend.

Please not Monica too.

“Your dad wants you to break things off with James,” she stated. “But he doesn’t know that I went to see him today.”

“Today?” My voiced cracked, afraid of what she going to tell me.

“I’ve never seen him like this before,” she continued. “I was as judgemental as everyone else when I first found out about you two but I didn’t realise how serious it was. I think he really loves you.”

“Did he say that?” I asked, feeling like a twelve-year-old who’d got her friend to quiz the guy she liked.

“Didn’t have to.” She smiled. “You need to talk to him, Cady.”

Monica was right. I did need to talk to James. But why hadn’t he got in touch with me?