Your Little Secret by Kirsty-Anne Still, Bethan Cooper Page A

accent fill the line, " Hi you've reached Ethan, leave me a message and I'll get back to you! " Waiting for the automatic voicemail lady to finish her speech she sighed into the handset.
    "Hey, Ethie, I don't know why you’re ignoring me. If I’ve hurt you, I’m sorry. I just found your stir-fry in my fridge. It's gone off." Laughing to herself and gulping back tears she continued. "I miss you, best friend. You bought me 'The Notebook.' Hopeless romantic hey? I thought you hated this movie? You did owe me a new version though." She sniffed and laughed softly at her own ramblings. "I just - I miss you, Ethan. I can't last a day without talking to you, so please, call me. I need you, and your stir-fry. Please, just come back to me."
    She locked her iPhone and made herself a cup of tea. Opening her cupboards she found a packet of cookies and switched on her TV, hoping to bore herself with something else. She quickly found the TV was talking to itself as she realised that her life was slowly crumbling down around her with every breath she took. Brick by brick the foundations she trusted and loved were failing her. She laughed to herself at the irony of all this. The two men that had become her pillars of support were gone. Connor was gone. Ethan was gone.
    In that sickening moment, Amber clambered off of the sofa and ran for her phone. Picking it up, she rang Ethan's number all over again. As the voicemail blasted into her ear she sunk to the kitchen floor and just closed her eyes, waiting for her moment to speak. The moment the voicemail bleeped, her throat closed up and she sat paralysed. This would be her ninth message and with each new ignored voicemail and text Amber's heart hallowed all the more.
    Covering her mouth, she cried at the phone, but she knew she had to speak up. "I'm so sorry, Ethan. I am such a screw up and I understand if this is the beginning of a life without you, but I can't deny how horrible the thought is. I got sucked in by him again and all for him to drop me so quickly. I chose him and why? I’ll tell you why; for him to leave and for you to never speak to me again." She made herself look up to the ceiling to keep the tears at bay a little more, "I'm so fucking sorry, Ethie. I’m a selfish bitch and I don’t deserve you. I see that now."
    She closed the call off and began to grip her phone tightly. Clutching it to her chest, she promised that as of Monday she would start a new life. It would be looming onto her birthday and she had to promise herself a new year without so much heartbreak and confusion. She couldn't let a man break her of the woman she prided on being. She had to be Amber Watson; a feisty, strong woman her parents had unintentionally made her into. Curling up against the floor, Amber granted herself one last moment of weakness and closed her eyes. She was so tired of this life - the strife, the constriction around her heart, the loneliness.
    " Amber ," a voice penetrated the darkness she had given herself and she hadn't realised she had fallen asleep. "C’mon, girl, it's time to wake up."
    She moaned against his fingertips as they traced her face and then she shot up in fright. She looked into the eyes of Ethan and as confusion mixed she melted with relief. "You're here?" she asked and had to stop herself from reaching out and touching him.
    "Of course I am," he said with a small smile, but he could tell she knew a part of him was now reserved. She knew he was guarded around her now and it broke his heart to do this for self-preservation and push her away.
    "Why?" she asked and her tone was whispered and short. "Why now?"
    "I've been stupid," he told her reaching out to push her messy hair out of her face. "And the fact you still have that stir fry in your fridge tells me you've barely been eating."
    "I'm fine," she bit back at him, not wanting to tell him about her newfound unhealthy diet.
    Ethan chuckled, "You need to eat."
    "You sound like the book I'm reading," she joked