Stubborn Love

by Natalie Ward

  “So remind me, what’s the plan for the next two days then?” I ask as I lean in and kiss her cheek. We’re staying down in Providence tonight, figured there was no point coming back to Boston only to turn around and head back in the morning. Plus I kinda liked the idea of a night away with her somewhere, where nobody knew us and we could be exactly what we wanted to be.

  Smiling she looks up at me. “Enroll, meet my teachers and find somewhere to live.”

  “Somewhere to live?” I ask. “Why don’t you just live with us, with me?”

  “What, in Boston?”

  I tuck her hair behind her ear, leaning in to kiss her lips this time. “Yeah Mia, in Boston. You know it would be a cheaper alternative, and you could catch the commuter each day. Plus,” I stop and kiss her again. “We’d get to be together every single night.”

  She’s looking at me with uncertainty on her face and I can feel the sinking feeling starting to grow in my stomach again. It almost takes over when she says, “Do you think Luke would mind if I lived with you guys?”

  I know what she’s really asking. Do I think Luke would notice things if she lived with us, notice that we aren’t exactly just friends anymore. And although I’m not entirely sure how he would feel about me dating his sister, the idea of finally coming clean to him is growing on me. It’s a wonder he hasn’t said anything really, given how I am now, compared to how I used to be. Now when we all go out, I’m no longer off with Ben, looking for girls. These days I’m more likely to be sitting with him or Steve and Pete, having a few quiet drinks and ignoring any girl who does come my way. And of course there are all the times I’ve dropped some piece of info that Mia’s told me, forgetting for a second that I probably wouldn’t normally know it. But he never says anything, so for now, I’m assuming he hasn’t worked it out.

  And while the sneaking around definitely has its advantages and it does make the whole thing seem sexy as hell, I’m getting tired of it. Tired of never being able to introduce her to anyone as my girlfriend, tired of not being able to walk down the street holding her hand when she visits, in case we run into someone we know. But most of all, I’m tired of not being able to wake up beside her after she’s fallen asleep beside me, because she’s snuck out during the night.

  More than anything else in the world, I just want to wake up wrapped around Mia.

  “Baby,” I whisper sadly. “Of course he won’t mind, why would he?”

  I watch as Mia closes her eyes and rests her head against my shoulder, burying her face in my neck. I can feel her breathing against my skin, a little unsteady. I run my hand slowly up and down her back, trying to comfort her when I really don’t even understand what the problem is.

  “Mia,” I ask. “Why would he care?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispers, without looking at me.

  “Talk to me,” I plead, lifting her face so she has to look at me. Mia’s eyes are full of sadness and I can’t resist leaning in to kiss her again.

  “I just don’t want to mess anything up,” she finally says.

  I lean in and kiss her again, deeper this time. She kisses me back and I can feel her fingers as they grip the front of my sweater, holding onto me, desperate almost. I slide my hand into her hair now as I kiss my way along her jaw.

  “Nothing will get messed up baby. Move in with me, please,” I whisper in her ear. “We’ll come clean about what’s going on between us if you want? It will be okay, I promise.”

  She exhales loudly against my cheek, her warm breath a rush against my skin. “Okay,” I hear her whisper back. “Let’s talk to him about me moving in.”

  And while it’s not an agreement to tell him about us, I know it’s a step in the right direction. I just hope it really is going to be okay.

  By the time we get back to Boston, it’s late on Friday night. Mia is staying for the weekend and I’m thinking regardless of whether we said anything to him or not, it’s going to be pretty obvious something’s going on between us. I didn’t come home last night…I’m now back, with Mia, off the train where she’s been down at her new school in Providence. It seems pretty fucking obvious to me where I’ve been and who I’ve been with.

  “Do you think Luke’s still at work?” Mia asks as we walk into the obviously empty apartment.

  I switch on the light and dump our bags by the couch. “Yeah I’d say so. He usually works late on Friday nights. Do you want a beer?” I ask walking into the kitchen.

  Mia follows me in and wraps her arms around my waist. “Maybe we could just go to bed?” she says, her voice a sexy whisper against my back.

  I turn in her arms, wrapping mine around her shoulders and pulling her close to me. “You don’t wanna wait up, talk to Luke tonight?”

  I feel her tense against me as she buries her face against my chest.

  “Mia?”

  “Why don’t we talk to him tomorrow,” she says, not looking at me now.

  “Baby,” I plead. “It’s going to be okay you know.”

  Mia presses a kiss to my chest, through my shirt, before finally looking up at me. “I know,” she says, the uncertainty still in her voice. “But let’s go to bed. We’ll tell him tomorrow. I promise.”

  When I wake up, Mia is gone as usual. This is without a doubt the worst part about our sneaking around, not having her here in the mornings. Sometimes if I wait long enough, she comes back to bed when Luke has gone to work, but today I’m getting up, knowing it’s time we came clean about all of this.

  I pull on some jeans and a t-shirt before walking out to the living room. Mia is curled up on the couch, a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. I walk towards her, but see she is sleeping, so I head into the kitchen to grab myself some coffee first. That’s when I see the note.

  Hey – gotta work all weekend. Sorry Mia…hopefully I’ll catch you before you leave on Sunday. Hope the school thing went well. Luke.

  Well, I guess that means we aren’t talking to him then. I pour myself some coffee and head back into the living room, taking a seat on the couch as I gently lift Mia’s feet and put them in my lap. Almost immediately she stirs, rolling onto her back and half opening her eyes at me.

  “Hey you,” she says, her voice husky with sleep.

  “Hey yourself baby,” I say, rubbing her feet.

  I watch as she raises her arms above her head, her toes pointing in my lap as she stretches her whole body out, right in front of me. It makes my stomach flip just watching her, so I put my coffee down and slide down on to the couch to lie beside her. I wrap my arms around Mia’s waist, sliding a hand up and under her t-shirt as I press a soft kiss to her lips. She’s still half asleep, but I feel her push her body closer to mine as she kisses me back.

  “Did you see Luke’s note?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I did. Guess that means we’re not talking to him huh?” I’m disappointed, knowing this is probably what’s going to happen. I really wanted this to be sorted out before Mia went back to LA, because I want to know that next time she comes here, she’ll be living here, with me.

  “I saw him just as he was leaving,” she says, surprising me.

  “Really?” I ask, stunned, my hand freezing half way up her back. “Did you say anything to him?” My heart pounds in my chest with the hopes that she did.

  Mia’s eyes open now, as she looks into mine. “Yeah,” she answers, a tiny smile on her face.

  “And?”

  She keeps smiling at me, but says nothing. She has a habit of doing this when she’s about to tell me something good, and it makes that pounding in my chest get harder and harder. I tighten my fingers on her back; pull her a tiny bit closer to me.

  “And, he said of course he was okay with me staying here. Said it was really up to you.”

  I actually start laughing, knowing that’s exactly what he would have said.

  “So are you okay with me staying here then, Jared?” she asks, her face completely serious now.

  My laughter immediately stops as
I remove my hand from her back and brush the hair away from her face before resting it against her cheek. “Baby, you are always, always welcome to stay here. There’s no where else I want you to be.”

  Mia smiles at me now and I lean in to kiss her, ignoring the fact that we still haven’t actually told Luke about us.

  Today, 2:24am – Mia

  “There’s more to this than just Luke and what happened with Brian though, isn’t there?” Jared finally asks, letting go of my hand.

  I nod as I watch him pull his hand away from me, even though I’m desperate to keep holding on to it.

  “And that’s why you were so reluctant to move in here, when you moved schools?” he asks.

  I’m still staring at my hands, wondering where his has gone, wondering whether I will ever get to hold it again. It’s amazing how something so small and seemingly insignificant as holding my hand, can mean so much. Maybe it’s the person; maybe it’s when they choose to hold your hand in theirs, I don’t know. All I know is that for the few minutes my hand was in his; none of this seemed as hard, or as painful.

  “Mia?” he says.

  I look up at him and watch as he tilts his head at me. I force myself to swallow, to let go of the feeling of emptiness that is slowly consuming me, and focus on the here and now.

  “When Luke first left, I was so angry at him,” I say, moving my hands back into my lap now. “Not that he had left me or our family or whatever, I was angry because I thought he’d given up. I thought he’d left to run away and hide,” I continue, trying to not to get upset.

  Even now, I can still remember how I felt. Abandoned, yes, but the bigger part of me felt disappointed. Disappointed that after everything he had done for me, everything he had done to protect me from the shit we were forced to grow up with, that he could just run away and hide like that. I couldn’t believe he could be that weak, not after everything he’d had to go through. Not after trying so hard to make everything okay for me.

  “I was so angry with him Jared, I wouldn’t even answer his calls, not for weeks. I was just so pissed at him.”

  Jared smiles a little now, as though he understands.

  “But he kept trying, kept calling me, every day, sometimes twice a day and more. He’s a stubborn shit,” I say, smiling as I remember all of the texts and missed calls I’d gotten. The pleading apologetic messages on my voicemail.

  “Bit like someone else I know actually,” Jared says.

  I lift my head to look at him and see he’s smiling at me. I can’t help smiling back, raising an eyebrow in pretend shock as though he can’t really be serious. He laughs at me now and it sends a tiny flutter throughout my whole body, starting in my heart and radiating out through every vein until even the tips of my fingers are tingling. A tiny little flutter, which fills up some of that emptiness.

  “So I’ve been told,” I eventually say.

  “Finally, she admits it,” Jared says, his eyes sparkling with amusement. I smile back at him as he adds on, “Stubborn isn’t all bad you know.”

  I bite my lip as I force myself not to just lean over and kiss him like I so badly want to. “No I guess not, and in Luke’s case, his stubbornness paid off. In the end I answered the phone just to stop him from calling me all the time.”

  Jared laughs now and that flutter turns into a full-blown hurricane. “And, what did he have to say for himself when you finally did?” he asks.

  I twist my fingers together, taking a deep breath. “He told me that he hadn’t run away to hide at all, he’d run away to live.”

  “Mia,” Jared immediately says, a question forming on his lips.

  “He’d run away to live Jared, to have the life he always wanted to have, the life he couldn’t have at home, with him.” I stop, the threat of tears making my voice crack and my eyes sting. I don’t want to get upset, I don’t want to cry, I just want to get all of this out. I just want to say these things to Jared so he’ll finally understand.

  “Mia…” Jared says again.

  “I didn’t want to ruin that for him,” I quickly say, not giving him a chance.

  “What?” he suddenly asks, surprise in his voice now.

  “I didn’t want to ruin that for him,” I repeat.

  “I don’t understand, how would you ruin it for him? How could anything that was happening between us ruin anything for Luke.”

  I breathe out, a deep exhale as I bite my lip, finally ready to say what I have always been too scared to. “This was Luke’s life, Jared, and you are Luke’s friend, his best friend. If I’d walked in and fucked it all up, I’d have ruined it for him, ruined everything he finally got when he ran away.”

  Jared exhales loudly, his hands running up and down his face before gripping the back of his neck. “Fuck,” he murmurs. With his hands still gripping the back of his neck, he opens his eyes and looks right at me. “You really thought that we, that us,” he says, gesturing between us with his eyes. “Would ruin whatever it was that Luke found out here? That just doesn’t make any sense Mia, I really don’t understand.”

  I breathe out, loud and long. “I know you don’t,” I say. “And that’s why I’m here, talking to you now. Because it’s time I finally explained. Explained why I made the dumbest decision of my life, and all the things that led me to that moment.”

  “Do you wish we’d never gotten together in the first place?” Jared asks, his voice soft, as though he doesn’t want to ask this question. “Or that we’d just never gotten caught?”

  I stare up at the ceiling. “Neither Jared,” I say and I mean it.

  “Really?” he asks and I can hear the surprise in his voice.

  I lower my eyes back to his. “Do you ever wonder, what would have happened, had we not been interrupted back at the bar? If Luke had walked in and found us kissing that night, if we’d never had to hide us being together in the first place?”

  I hear Jared exhale, his hand running through his hair again, which almost makes me laugh as it immediately falls back in his face. “I used to,” he finally says. “But I think in the end, it worked out the way it was supposed to. Plus,” he says, a tiny hint of amusement in his voice. “The sneaking around was fun for a while.”

  I smile at Jared and watch as he smiles back. “Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?”

  “It was, although there were times I thought you wanted us to stay hidden, that you preferred it that way, especially when you first moved in here.” His voice is quieter now, and I can hear the sadness, the resignation. He’s sort of right, but sort of wrong too, he just doesn’t understand the reasons why.

  “I used to wish Luke had seen us that night at the club,” I tell him. “I keep thinking, everything could have been so much easier.”

  “Really?”

  My fingers pick at the duvet again, wanting him to notice and take them in his. “Yeah, really. I think had he seen us like that, I wouldn’t have felt so guilty about all the sneaking around afterwards.”

  “You felt guilty?” Jared asks me, surprised.

  I shift around, uncrossing and re-crossing my legs. “I did, some of the time anyway.”

  “Why?” he asks me.

  “Because of what happened when we were kids, the way Luke always got the worst of it,” I say. “How was it fair that he suffered and I didn’t. How was it fair that he had to put up with all of Dad’s shit, but I didn’t and then on top of it, I also got you?”

  “Mia…” Jared whispers, his hand out and finally reaching for mine again. I meet him half way, turning my palm and curling my fingers around his hand so he can’t let go. “You thought you didn’t deserve us?”

  My heart hurts at the way he says these words, as though it’s something to do with him, when he couldn’t be further from the truth. I wish I could make him understand that none of this was ever about him. He was and is, the best thing that has ever happened to me and even now, I still can’t believe I got to have him, that for a while, Jared was mine. It was never about him, ever, and I wish
more than anything, that he understood that.

  Without thinking about it, I lift our joined hands and press a kiss to the back of his. “It’s not like that Jared,” I whisper against his skin. “But it all just seemed too good to be true, as though me having you, was all too much of a good thing. It just didn’t seem fair. I felt like I didn’t deserve you.” And it’s true. I still don’t even know if I deserve him now, especially after everything I’ve done to him.

  “Mia,” Jared whispers and it’s heartbreaking to hear him say my name like that.

  I close my eyes as I pull my hand away from him, knowing he must think that I didn’t think he was worth it. But Jared reaches out and catches my hand in his, holding it tightly as my eyes open and find him looking at me. I glance down at our hands, joined together between us and bridging the gap, which suddenly doesn’t feel quite so big anymore.

  Three years and two months ago – Jared

  “You sure you’re okay with Mia staying here?” Luke asks me for the hundredth time.

  “Dude, seriously, I’m totally fine with it,” I say, grabbing a couple of beers from the fridge for us. “Stop asking me that already.”

  Luke takes his beer and leans back against the kitchen counter. “I just wanna make sure, you know. I mean, I don’t know if you banked on having two of us here, is all.”

  The sound of a knock on the door has us both turning towards it. “Well it’s a bit fucking late now, isn’t it?” I say laughing.

  Luke smacks me on the back of the head as he heads out to answer the door. I wait in the kitchen, weirdly nervous about seeing Mia again for some reason. I don’t really know what her coming to stay is going to be like, how it’s all going to work out. I certainly don’t know how we’re going to do this, given Luke doesn’t exactly know we are sleeping together. The whole thing has the potential to end in a fuck load of trouble, for both of us. But right now, there’s a bigger part of me that doesn’t really care about the minor details. The only thing I do know is that I can’t wait to see her. Cannot wait to kiss her again.