Choosing Love

Chapter Twenty Four

A few days after the Chad debacle as Mal had begun to call it in her head, the Godling stood in front of her bed. Her bed, which had been taken over by the interior of her wardrobe. She was going to clean it out and start anew...she just didn't know where to begin.

"Did your closet explode or something?"

"Please tell me you don't come bearing food again. It's like you do that every time I see you lately," Mal said, shaking her head as she turned to look at the Arendelle heir in her doorway. "What are you even doing here? Your girlfriend is on the other end of the school."

"It's a beautiful day and Emir and I wanted to see if you and Estelle wanted to go running around with Emma, Elle, Sven and Rajah?"

"...Ben's cool with a tiger being on campus?"

"Well we wouldn't be on property. We'd go to the Enchanted Lake. Rajah's up there in years but he still likes to swim. What about Estelle?"

"Honestly I don't know," Mal told him, ignoring the slight bit of panic at the idea of swimming. Besides, unlike Ben, his shadows seemed to be well aware of when she was lying. She just...she'd already been weak around them once. Letting them know about her fear of water almost seemed like overkill.

And yes she was aware that she went into the water during her date with Ben. That was different. She wasn't going to let Ben drown while on a date with her!

"Well doesn't Harry swim all the time? At least that's what it seemed like from what Jay told us."

"His dad taught him to swim by the time he could walk. It's a pirate thing really, you can't really have the kid of a pirate drowning now can you?"

"What about Uma?"

Mal raised her eyebrow, giving Akiho a look and causing the blond to shake his head.

"I realized the stupidity of the question the moment it left my lips," he said with a sigh. "But Estelle never joined them for a swim?"

"Look Akiho, we don't really swim on the Isle," Mal told him. "Sure some of the crew will if it gets hot enough but otherwise, we tend to not want to risk our clothing, what little we had. Speaking of which, I need to get back to this."

"Need some help?"

"You're offering to be around girly clothing for who knows how long when your best friend and girlfriend are probably waiting for you?"

Akiho chuckled. "If I can be around Ben when he reorganizes his books, I can be around a few dresses. Fair warning, the book reorganization can go on for hours. Sometimes it's days if Belle gets involved. Nine times out of ten you'll walk in on him reading the books instead of you know actually organizing them."

"Ben didn't put you up to this did he?"

"He knows I'm asking you about the Enchanted Lake trip before I go down to his office to drag him along but other than that, he does not know that I'm helping you with your closet reorg. Speaking of which...why are you reorganizing your closet?"

Mal sighed. "I know Evie worked hard on all the clothes but...they're not me. The issue is I like some of them. But if I'm going to go back to being 'me' instead of what I wanted to be to keep Natalie off my back and The Gazelle off my back, I need to have clothes that reflect that I'm me."

"Gotcha," Akiho nodded and picked up a white dress. "Well, first off, this? Not you. It looks more like something my aunt would wear than you."

"Put it in the pile then," Mal said, pointing to her pillows where a fair bit of her clothes already were. "Clothes I'm getting rid of go there and clothes I'm keeping will go on the foot of the bed for ease of transport."