by Tasha Blue
“I’m sorry, Anaya.” Jakob said impatiently, as though it was her fault that they were fighting again. “I was about to leave when Harry asked me to stay behind to look a glitch in the equation. We’re presenting the theory on Monday. What did you want me to do?”
“Forget the theory!” Anaya snapped. “Forget Harry. You made a promise to me, Jakob. You didn’t even call.”
“I didn’t have your number, baby.” Jakob told her. “You got that new phone, remember? I haven’t programmed the number into my cell yet.”
“So you thought the best option was just to leave me standing outside the building for forty minutes in the freezing cold?” Anaya demanded furiously.
“Forty minutes?” Jakob repeated. “You should have known after ten.”
“Are you kidding me?” Anaya snapped. “It’s my fault? You know, usually, when somebody says that they’re going to be somewhere, a person will wait for him because a person assumes he’ll be where he says he’s going to be. What makes you the exception? Am I supposed to be able to read your mind? Have things gotten so bad that when you’re running late I should just assumed that I’ve been stood up and leave after ten minutes? I guess that’s a fair assumption. You do this all the time.”
Jakob rolled his eyes, placed his briefcase down on the sofa with an irritated sigh and headed to the kitchen to pour himself a drink.
“I’m tired, Anaya.” he told her. “I don’t need this right now. I’ve been working hard.”
“I’m not the one being completely unreasonable,” Anaya told him firmly. “Are you seriously telling me that you can’t understand why I’m upset? You left me waiting for you out in the cold on my birthday and never showed up.”
Her boyfriend sighed patronizingly like he was dealing with an impetuous child and spoke to her in that condescending tone of voice that made her so angry.
“Look, Anaya, I’m sorry I missed your birthday, okay?” he told her. “I have important work to do with some pretty big implications. Some things are more important than birthday cake and balloons.”
Anaya glared at him for a moment in stunned silence. Even now there were times when she couldn’t believe how unbelievably arrogant he could be. She took his glass from him and poured his whiskey down the sink.
“You know what? You can get out of my house now,” she told him.
“Oh come on, Anaya,” Jakob complained. “I’ve come all the way from uptown. I thought I was going to stay here tonight. What’s the point in me driving all the way back to my place when you’re just going to forgive me in the morning anyway?”
“First of all, if you hadn’t thrown out my designs when you were here, we’d still be living together,” she reminded him. “Second, don’t assume I’m going to forgive you for anything. There is a point when the things you do won’t fly. People have feelings, Jakob. I’ve had enough of this.”
“You’re still angry about those doodles?” Jakob sighed. “I apologized for that. You overreacted at the time. I can’t believe you’re still mad about that.”
“They were my work!” she snapped at him, staring at him in disbelief.
“They were scraps all over the place. I was trying to clean up,” he snapped back at her.
“You knew that they were important to me and you threw them away like they were trash!” Anaya shouted. She realized that she was raising her voice and lowered it to speak at a normal volume. “Look, I’m not going to have an argument with you that we’ve already had. The point is, you don’t respect me. You don’t respect my career and the way you’ve behaved tonight shows you have no respect for my time or my feelings. Just leave.”
Jakob audibly scoffed. “Your career?” he mocked. “Working as a receptionist is not a career. Having a hundred pictures of dresses under your bed is not a career. Making pretty dresses so that people notice you is not a career. Don’t take it out on me just because I have a job worth working late for.”
“Get out!” Anaya yelled. She didn’t care if her voice was raised. Jakob had touched a nerve and she just wanted him out of her apartment. Once again she felt the frustration and hurt of loving an impossible man. Owen was right. She could do better than Jakob. She picked up Jakob’s briefcase and threw it into the hall, slamming the door behind him as he followed it there. Finally, he was gone.
Anaya was furious and shaking. She strode across the room and picked up the phone. As much as she didn’t want to tell Owen that he was right yet again, she needed to hear the voice of someone who was on her side. No matter how many times Anaya phoned Owen to tell him the same story, he always had a new way of making her feel better. If she wasn’t too late, perhaps he would still come by with that movie and wine and they could celebrate together another year of bad choices.
Chapter3
Owen’s feet pounded against the turning rubber of the treadmill and he pushed himself onwards. He went to the gym several times a week to keep in shape and to help him relax. The gentle whirring of the treadmill and background bustle of people running and cycling allowed his mind to wander and for his stress to disappear.
Owen was a veterinarian who loved his job and all the different people he got to meet and the animals that he worked with, but it came with a lot of pressure. People loved their pets and they put the lives of these animals in his hands daily. When a rabbit died on his watch, Owen wouldn’t be wracked with guilt because these animals had short lives and sometimes nothing could be done, but he still hated to see a little girl cry because Flopsy had gone to a better place. That afternoon a little old lady’s cat of fourteen years had been brought in to be put down and Owen had struggled to shrug off how sad he felt to know that a senior’s companion had gone.
It wasn’t all bad; far more often than losing an animal, Owen was able to return a pet to its family in full health and then, for a brief moment, he would be a part of a family’s joy and he lived for that feeling. His own apartment complex didn’t allow pets, so the social and animal-loving young man lived alone in an empty apartment.
He’d had girlfriends over the years, but none had stuck. It was partially because he worked so hard and partially because he struggled to find a woman that he clicked with. Most women he met seemed to be looking for a confident, sports-loving captain of the football team kind of guy and Owen was more of the quiet, sensitive type. From time-to-time, he’d meet a girl that was cute and they’d have a few good months, but they’d always seem to grow bored with him in the end. Owen had been told that he wasn’t spontaneous enough and that he was too safe. Owen wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
James, Owen’s friend from school, came over to him dripping sweat and with a towel around his neck. He was a very tall man with shoulder-length black hair and a sort-of beard that he had been trying to grow ever since his daughter had been born. It was an attempt to look more like a father figure than a baby-faced school boy. He and Owen often arranged to come together to work out and then, if they had time, they’d go out and get a drink together, but Owen had seen less of him since he’d become a father. Owen slowed down his pace on the treadmill and then stepped off to talk to him.
“I’ve got to go,” James told Owen breathlessly, looking at his watch. “I’ve already been too long. Harriet’s going to kill me.”
“Can’t you get away to the gym for a while?” Owen asked him. “You’ve only been here thirty minutes.”
“No, sorry,” James sighed. “Not with the baby. Harriet is struggling with the nighttime feedings and everything. The baby never sleeps. Harriet is losing her mind. She needs me to help out a bit more.”
“You’ve already missed two sessions this week,” Owen reminded him.
James held up his hands in a defeated shrug. “What can you do?” he said. “I’m a father now. You’ll understand when you have kids.”
Owen scoffed at the idea and James laughed at him.
“What? You don’t want kids?” he asked him.
“You’ve got to have a wife before you have
kids,” Owen said with a half-smile.
“Ah, yes,” James chuckled. “Owen, the eternal bachelor! You know, that preppy personal trainer has had her eyes on you for weeks. I don’t know why you’re holding off on asking her out.”
Owen made a face. “She seems nice,” he said diplomatically.
“But?” James pressed.
“But she’s a bit, you know... energetic.”
“Energetic? Is that a bad thing?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Owen sighed.
“Your expectations are too high,” James advised him. “You’re never going to meet the perfect woman, but she’s pretty close. She’s gorgeous. You can’t plan for everything, Owen. Sometimes you have to take a risk on someone to find out if it’s right. You can’t just watch her from a distance and make up your mind.”
“You’re probably right,” Owen agreed.
James was right about Owen. The veterinarian liked routine in his life and stability, but Owen didn’t think that was a bad thing. For him, the most important thing in a relationship was trust and understanding and he wasn’t sure that you found that in a nightclub or on the pull in a bar. He was searching for something deep and meaningful to share with a woman and struggled to find someone to click with because he always expected too much too soon and was unsatisfied with the superficiality of first dates. He wanted someone he could be comfortable with and share his life with, but to get there he had to spend a lot of time doing ground work to work out if someone could ever provide that kind of trust and understanding. As a shy man, Owen found the process of searching for ‘the one’ just a bit too daunting.
“Perhaps it’s not Lisa that’s the problem, but a certain other woman on your mind,” James guessed, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
“It’s got nothing to do with Anaya,” Own denied. “I’m just not sure Lisa’s quite right for me.”
Apart from the brief relationships he’d had with various women, his main insight into the fairer sex came from conversations with his best friend, Anaya. He’d been friends with Anaya ever since she had moved in next door to him when they had both been just toddlers. Watching Anaya’s family move in was one of his first memories. He could still recall sitting on the grass watching Anaya’s strict-looking father and her plump mother carrying boxes up the drive and then he’d seen her. Anaya had come toddling along on her mother’s hand with big, wide eyes and her wild hair and when she had spotted Owen she had started tugging on her mother’s arm and grown excited that a little boy her own age would live next door. Anaya and Owen’s childish excitement at finding a new friend had made their parents laugh and start talking over the garden fence. That was how the two families and grown close and the first of their play dates had been arranged. They’d been in each other’s lives ever since, and Anaya was the only person Owen would talk to about his love life because Anaya was the only one who knew him well enough to be able to tell him straight when he was missing signals from a girl. She always laughed at his shyness and gave him advice for pursuing girls.
For a long while, she had been dating a jerk named Jakob who had no respect for her and who always let her down, but Anaya always went back to him. Every time that she called Owen to cry on his shoulder and talk about how Jakob didn’t care, Owen would be left incredulous at the fact that she kept going back to him, but Anaya insisted that Jakob was a good man. Owen didn’t see it himself. Jakob seemed to him an arrogant, nasty and selfish man, but perhaps Owen was biased because he hated to see Anaya cry.
“Yeah, yeah,” James replied, rolling his eyes. “I’ve heard that all before. You’ve only crushed on her your whole life.”
“It’s got nothing to do with Anaya,” Owen repeated, trying to inject more conviction into his voice. “I’m just no good with women. You know that.”
“Don’t I know it!” James laughed. “It’s hard to be the wingman to the worst flirt ever. I’d go over to a girl and apologize before introducing you, knowing that you were probably just going to turn red and say something incredibly awkward.”
Owen laughed at the memories of their nights out on the town when Owen had been home from college and had met up with his old school friend. It was true that he was not the most talented at chatting up women.
“I never know what to say to women,” Owen confessed. “Don’t you feel like they’re always expecting you to blow them away and then you just don’t have anything to say?”
“A woman is just looking for a guy with some confidence and a little bit of an edge,” James told him. “They want a man with some mystery about him or a guy who’s just a little distant or something, I don’t know. They enjoy the chase as much as we do. Your problem is that you’re too open. You just go in as this ordinary nice guy with his heart on his sleeve and people don’t buy it.”
In truth, it seemed to Owen that whatever Anaya had with Jakob was what most women were looking for. Owen was a romantic at heart who liked to wine and dine a girl and cuddle up under a blanket on the sofa on a quiet evening and talk late into the night, but soon girls grew bored with the guy who was a good listener or offered the romantic gestures because there were never any surprises in a relationship like that. Girls liked guys like Jakob, who so rarely do anything thoughtful or kind that when they do, it feels like a firework moment for an underappreciated girl who would swoon at the romance.
Owen knew that in part his disdain for Jakob stemmed from his affections for Anaya. The two had been neighbors when they were young children and had grown up on the same street. Anaya’s parents had moved to a different part of town in ninth grade, but the two had stayed close, even through different high schools and then different colleges.
“Anaya always told me that girls like a nice guy,” Owen said in his defense. “She said that I’m doing everything right and I just need to wait for the right girl.”
“If Anaya thinks you’re so perfect, why isn’t she dating you?” James challenged. “Look, Owen, Anaya loves you as a friend, but she’s not the best person to get dating advice from, if you know what I mean. She’s telling you that girls want a nice guy, but she’s wrong. Girls want a guy who makes them feel special, like they’ve been picked out and chosen. They want to feel like the guy could have had anyone, but chose them. You just make it too obvious that you’re available. What’s worse is that you keep pining over Anaya when she’s not interested.”
The vet felt that he had a closeness and connection with Anaya that he’d never found anywhere else and perhaps that was why he struggled so much to make a connection with anyone else. The flame he carried for Anaya had been burning for a very long time, but somehow the two had missed their time together. Owen had known for over a decade that his feelings for Anaya were more than the platonic affections of a best friend, but he had never acted on them. He wouldn’t have said that it was love, as love by its nature has to be returned and Anaya had never given him any sign that she thought of him that way, but there was definitely something about Anaya that Owen couldn’t quite put his finger on that he’d always found himself subconsciously looking for in other girls. Maybe it was that feeling of trust and understanding that mattered to him so much. Of course he had that with Anaya; he’d known her forever.
“I’m not into Anaya,” Owen repeated yet again, but even he wasn’t convinced by his words.
“You keep telling yourself that,” James chuckled. “I’ve known you forever Owen, and I know that you’ve got a huge thing for her. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be turning a blind eye when another gorgeous girl is desperate for your attention.”
The difficult thing about thinking you might have feelings for your best friend is that there is no right time to say it out loud. When Owen and Anaya had been young children, their play dates had been innocent and full of fun and games and neither of them had ever thought about the other in a romantic way.
When Owen had hit puberty and his hormones had kicked in, he’d realized that Anaya’s tightly curled black hair, dark skin
and gentle brown eyes were beautiful and he’d started to feel an attraction for her, but at that time he was too awkward to say anything and every time he tried he would trip over his words and couldn’t let her know that he was a fifteen-year old with a crush. When they’d reached their late teens, Owen had tried again to express his affections for Anaya, but then when he’d gotten his acceptance letter for a college out of state he knew it was the wrong time.
Then by the time he’d come back, Anaya was with Jakob and had been ever since. There had been times when she and Jakob had been on a break, but Owen had never stepped in at those times because after all these years he felt it was too dangerous to try and turn a friendship with Anaya into a relationship. Nothing in the world could make him risk losing Anaya’s friendship and with her on-again off-again status with Jakob, he wasn’t sure that he’d ever be able to compare anyway. Besides, if he were ever with Anaya it wouldn’t be a fling. With Anaya it was all or nothing. So far, it had been consistently a big fat nothing.
“Lisa might not even be into me anyway,” Owen told him. “Did you consider that?”
“She is definitely into you,” James asserted. “She’s always making excuses to come and talk to you. She’s always watching you work out. She’s so into you that even you would struggle to screw it up. You should stop daydreaming over what it would be like to be Anaya’s boyfriend and ask Lisa out.”
Owen knew that he probably considered what it would be like to have a relationship with Anaya more often than a good friend should, but he had become skilled over the years at hiding the fact that these things ever crossed his mind and had done his best to get out there in the dating world and find someone, but he’d never had much success.
