Wasted Opportunities

Chapter 18

Michael's POV

I woke up to the sound of Ashton and Calum arguing in our room. I moaned and tried to pull the pillow over my head to block out the noise, but it didn't work, and soon Luke's voice joined them. I dragged back the curtain surrounding my bunk groggily, and blinked in the light. The blur in my sleepy eyes faded to reveal the three boys standing in front of my bunk, Calum and Ashton glaring at each other with folded arms, and Luke standing between the two looking upset.

“Sorry, did we wake you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing a hand across my face. “What's going on?”

“After Calum posted that picture of us, everyone's gone mental!” said Ashton. “There's so many rumours, hate's spreading to Maddy already and nobody knows what's really going on!”

“I didn't realise this would happen, okay?” complained Cal. “It was just a joke, and everyone would have found out anyway.”

“That's the thing, people haven't found out! They just saw a picture of me with a girl and they're all making assumptions, the rumours are crazily out of proportion and soon Maddy is going to see all this stuff and it's going to upset her!”

“Oh, great,” I sighed, getting out of bed. “Have you talked to her yet?”

“No, I haven't seen any of the girls yet this morning,” said Ash, running his hands through his hair anxiously.

“You should go talk to them,” I suggest. “Or at least see if they're awake, I'll go get up.”

“I think we should discuss this properly,” said Luke. “Everyone meet in the lounge in twenty minutes.”

Half an hour later, everyone is in the lounge, in various stages of being ready for the day. The other boys seem to have been awake for hours, but the girls are still yawning, and Emily has just pulled a hoodie over her pyjamas.

“Okay. I don't know if you guys have been on any social media recently,” said Ash, looking at the girls, “But since Cal posted that picture of me and Maddy, there have been a few rumours going round, since nobody really knows who you are, and everything's gone kind of crazy... so I think we need to do something to clear all of this up.”

“I went on Instagram this morning,” voiced Emily. “I follow a lot of 5sos accounts, they all had the picture and had heard various rumours about Maddy... most of which were complete rubbish.”

“What should we do?” asked Ashton. “We can't just leave this out there, we have to tell them something. Should I tweet?”

“I don't know, I think this might be more than a tweet thing,” I said. “We need to tell them about Emily, Maddy and Jojo, so they know what's going on.”