Page 7 of Not Falling for the Forward
“Dramatic? They called me old!” I huff, sitting up and crossing both my legs and arms.
“You are old,” my sister says as her eyes travel up and down my body, assessing me. “Wow! Scratch that, you’re not old, you’re a fucking baby. Are you having an actual tantrum right now?”
“I’m eighteen months older than you, and you can talk about tantrums,ooh my new Chanel has dirt on it, waaaah!” I mimic her breakdown from a few years ago almost flawlessly.
She stomps over pointing a finger in my face. “That bag wasfour thousand pounds, and it is the first thing I bought myself when my business took off! You know that!”
“Why are you having a go at me about it, it was Kamilla that did it!” We both cringe at the mention of our oldest brother’s wife. The ‘health guru’ that helps people ‘live their lives in their most authentic ways,’ regardless of the fact that she just follows any new fad trend she sees on the Internet. I’m pretty sure you could get her to eat her own shit if you said it had ‘cleansing properties’. Safe to say she’s not the most well liked one of my very traditional, working class, northern family.
Aimee plops herself next to me, the soft cushions of the sofa almost engulfing her small frame. She’s the shortest of the Cartwright clan at 5 foot 2, taking after our mother, whereas myself and my two older brothers follow my dad with the height gene all topping a few inches over 6 foot. At twenty-seven, she’s the closest sibling in age to me and we used to team up to take on our older brothers; we formed a bond in childhood that has never been broken, and I am still closest to her. Despite our normal sibling bickering we are always on the same team. We always had the same group of friends growing up and now, with her being a model and influencer, we still run in the same circles.
Aimee picks up my phone and scrolls through the Google page full of crappy things about me and sighs, “Well, it could be worse.”
“Yeah?” I lift an eyebrow at her, “Wanna enlighten me how?”
“Well, they could have been there for you warming up and pictured you KO-ing that woman.” She laughs.
I groan and fall back, my hands over my face, “Don’t remind me. I feel fucking awful about that!”
“As you should.” Aimee shrugs. “I’m sure she’ll be fine, you should probably check though, she might try and sell a story or something! God that headline would be horrible, ‘meet the woman that Jack Cartwright…’”
“STOOOOOOP!Please!” I groan and cut her off, “I can’t take any more negative press at the moment, no matter how fictional.”
“I’ll stop winding you up when you get ready for my live.” She smirks at me, and I roll my eyes.
“What are we even doing in it?” I ask.
“Literally, just going live and seeing what people ask.”
“People engage with that shit?”
“Ohhh, you have no idea,” she says, a knowing smile on her face. She stands and fluffs her waist length extensions out. I finally get a look at what she’s wearing, and I shoot up.
“What the fuck!?” I ask, “Am I meant to be naked in this too?” She rolls her eyes as I examine her. Her massive fake boobs—that mum still tuts at—are barely covered in a white bra thing that I’m pretty sure in her lighting set up is going to end up see through. Then it’s all bare skin down to her low rise shorts that barley cover her arse. “That’s a fucking weird get up for a brother, sister live ‘chat’,” I air quote around the last word.
“Yes, well. My followers like it,” she says as she sashays her way back into the bedroom, that she has adopted as her own.
“I bet they fucking do,” I call after her. I don’t like to think about it, but I know she has a huge following from herOnlyFanssite. I found out about it when one of the football lads basically threw their phone in my face with a screenshot of her with some dude’s cock in her mouth. That was not a fun conversation when I got home. I all but begged her to stop, telling her I’d give her money if she needed it. But she set me straight telling me that she enjoys what she does. I prettymuch shut the conversation down there, I don’t care how close you are with your little sister, you don’t ever need to know how or if she enjoys sex. I’m still terrified that one day I’ll be scrolling my favourite sites and one of her films will be there.
My phone pings again, another Google alert. I don’t even bother to look. Maybe doing a live with Aimee will help get my side of the story out.
Shit. What if one of them on there saw my warmup and asks about Emily? I groan, my head falling back on the couch cushions again. I need to find that woman and apologise.
I have seen her most on Saturdays. So, I just have to wait a week, find her and apologise. Job done.
Chapter three
Jack
We’re finally playing back home after the Christmas break and a few weeks of away games. Three weeks without any update on Emily. Five since I last saw her. I don’t know why I'm counting how long it has been. It just seems to be something I do with her. Maybe it's the guilty conscience. I just want to see her, apologise, and make sure she is okay.
She’d looked so sad last time I saw her, before the violent assault that is, and it's been bothering me that the normal twinkle in her eye wasn't there. I hope it’s back today. Shit, I just hopesheis back today.
I don’t think I have slept properly since ‘the incident’, as I am now referring to it—out of guilt, worry, or something else altogether, I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready to know. All I do need to know is if I really broke her nose. Then, I don’t know, cut off my own to give to her? That doesn't seem logical. Maybe it was me that got the head injury all those weeks ago.
This woman is making me weird.
I had tried to do some online stalking of Emily during these past few weeks so I could message her and see how she was. But I couldn’t find anything. Turns out it's really hard to find someone online when you only have a first name and know the company she occasionallyvolunteers for. In one fleeting moment of madness, I considered posting anInstagramstory asking my seventeen-point-five million followers to find her, but it would have been unfair to subject her to that kind of fanfare without her consent.
