by Mia Ford
“Great!” Lily cheers. “Can we invite Mom, too?”
My smile becomes fixed. I would be okay with never seeing Polly again, at this point.
“I’ll see what she says,” I promise instead.
Lily’s sake. This is all for Lily’s sake. As much as I want to, I can’t just tell Polly to stay away. Not only will she just keep going with her custody battle, where I can’t confront her, but it would devastate Lily now that she finally has her mom around to talk to.
“Thanks, Dad,” Lily beams, hugging me around the middle and then skipping away.
I take the chance to quickly peek into my room. Georgia has rolled over, but she’s still sleeping. I close my door and turn around.
Lily is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, her eyes narrowed, staring at me. Oops.
“What’s going on?” Lily asks suspiciously. “Is there someone in there?”
“No,” I counter. “I just, uh, heard the wind knock something over.”
Lily turns to look outside the kitchen window, at the tree that has branches curling around the grass. There’s not enough wind to stir even the smallest leaves.
Double damn.
Lily doesn’t say anything, however. She knows that I just lied to her, but she doesn’t call me out on it. Instead she just stares at me suspiciously before flouncing into the kitchen. I sigh and follow her; I need to keep an eye on her in case she starts investigating.
And then I would have to find some way to explain.
“Can we have some toast?” Lily asks, already grabbing a loaf of bread.
“Sounds good,” I comment. “What do you want on it?”
“Honey?” Lily asks hopefully.
“Honey toast, coming right up,” I joke, taking the bread she’s handing me.
Lily beams and takes a seat at the table. For a long moment, she just stares at me, thinking. Finally, however, she sits up straighter, and I’m unprepared for the first thing she says.
“So, why is Georgia in your room?” Lily asks casually.
I almost drop my knife.
“What?” I ask.
“I saw her when you opened the door,” Lily says.
“What, but…” I clear my throat. “It’s grown-up stuff. We just decided to have a sleepover.”
Lily grins. “So Georgia is here.”
I frown at her.
“You just said you saw her,” I point out.
“My teacher taught us about bluffing,” Lily says, beaming.
I’ve just been out played by my ten-year-old daughter. It was the oldest trick in the book too.
“I see,” I respond, rolling my eyes. “Then, yes, Georgia is here. But she’s asleep. I’ll tell her you wanted to say hi.”
“Yeah,” Lily says, disappointed. “Thanks.”
I chuckle and carry a plate of toast to the table, reaching over to ruffle her hair once I’ve put the plate down. Lily grins up at me.
“Maybe she’ll still be here when I get home,” she says.
“Maybe,” I reply with a shrug. “But she might have work.”
“Yeah, she might need to hand in that project she did yesterday.” Lily nods. “Did you help her with it last night?”
“Er…no, she didn’t need my help with that,” I say, determinedly not thinking of what else I did for Georgia last night.
“You have a weird look on your face, Dad,” Lily tells me.
I can’t help but laugh at that.
“Sorry,” I say to her. “Now, hurry up, we need to head to school soon.”
I smile as Lily wolfs down her breakfast and darts off to brush her teeth. Lily is the one thing I will never regret in my life.
My smile drops.
Now I just have to figure out whether or not I regret what happened last night.
I drop Lily off and drive a few blocks away before parking on a quiet street. My home is still another few minutes way, but I’m not ready to go back yet. Georgia might be up by now, and I’m not sure what I’m going to say to her when I face her.
Last night really was amazing. I chose to keep going, addicted to the feel of Georgia underneath my hands and lips, and wanting to hear more of her moans and gasps. I tugged all these feelings out of her, and she did the same for me in turn.
But now it’s morning, throwing everything from last night in a different light. Georgia is addictive. And I wanted her.
“You want me, and I want you. So what’s holding you back?”
Everything Georgia said was true. I tried to pretend that I had no feelings for her, and it worked for a long time. If I kept her at arm’s length, then I could protect us both. But, from the moment her hands and her lips touched me, I was gone.
I have no self control.
“What are you going to do now, Ethan?”
What? I don’t know what to do next. I knew last night, when the only things that needed to make sense were the feel of her body, the way she touched me and the impending orgasm. Everything made far more sense in the darkness.
Now it’s day, and, like with Polly, I don’t know what to do. I told myself that I needed to find some way to deal with both Polly and Georgia, to fix everything that went wrong. Yet I tried to fix things with Georgia, so things could go back to normal, and completely failed.
So, now what?
“I’ve been in love with you for thirteen years…”
Yes, I heard that. I try to remember if there was some sort of hint about her feelings. Surely I wasn’t that foolishly oblivious. Thirteen years ago was when Georgia was fifteen, and it was also about the same time that Polly and I had met.
Had it been obvious then? Or did she just keep it to herself?
“I’ve wanted you all that time, but it was never the right moment.”
I just can’t believe that Georgia has waited until this moment, until the words left my mouth first. I knew she was patient, but this is ridiculous. We’re talking thirteen years, here. And she was in love with me all that time, waiting for me to look at her? Even worse, she had stationed herself at my side, and I had never looked at her once because I was so scared.
How the hell did she bear it?
“I’ve waited for you all this time, Ethan.”
On the other hand, why didn’t she just say something to me? Was she scared of rejection? I know it hadn’t been a good time around the time that Polly left, but it’s been over ten years since then. If she had told me how she felt even last year, it would have been okay.
And I wouldn’t have rejected her straight away. Georgia is my best friend. I would have taken it away and considered what she told me, searching for whether we could be together. Maybe I would have come to these realizations sooner.
Though, I don’t blame her. If anything, I’m the oblivious fool here.
My mental planning pauses as I remember Georgia telling me that I was oblivious last week. I snort. I didn’t read anything into it, then; I just thought she was joking with me. Now I realize that she was being serious.
“What happened with Polly…will never happen with me.”
In the end, though, everything came down to my past. I’ve been running from it all this time. God knows how many times I’ve hurt Georgia because of it. How did she feel as she watched me break down over Polly? She stood beside me and helped me through everything, and I repaid her by accidentally hurting her at every turn because of one relationship that went wrong.
Admittedly, it went very wrong. Getting some answers from Polly ten years later hasn’t helped at all, just made me feel more empty and drained.
Now, on top of all that, Polly is about to challenge me for custody over Lily. It’s the last thing I need on top of everything else, and I haven’t even told Georgia about it yet.
I wonder if I should. Then I shake my head. Georgia probably has enough on her mind right now, between her work and everything that’s happening between us. I can handle Polly for now.
I just wish that she wasn’t standing in the way of wha
t’s happening between Georgia and me. Part of me thinks that I should cut this off before I end up getting hurt again. I trust Georgia more than anyone else. But I also trusted Polly, and look where that got me.
But…
“Don’t run. I know it’s frightening, but please don’t run from this. I’ll never do to you what Polly did.”
I think about Georgia’s soft plea. She didn’t once tell me what I had to do. She just made a quiet request for me to at least try,
It’s this, more than anything else, that makes me take in a deep breath. Georgia is beautiful. She’s my best friend in the world. She’s trustworthy and she keeps my secrets, and she’s an amazing pseudo-mother for Lily.
So what’s holding me back?
Fucking Polly.
I snort to myself and lower my head toward the steering wheel, closing my eyes briefly. It all keeps coming back to her, doesn’t it? Polly broke my heart and ripped my life apart with her actions ten years ago. Those actions have played on my mind ever since, convincing me that getting that close to anyone ever again was just a recipe for disaster.
Yet, I’ve made a liar of myself. All this time, I’ve been courting Georgia without even realizing it. If I look over our entire relationship over the last few years, we might as well be fucking dating with the way we act around each other.
Have I been accidentally leading Georgia on this entire time because I didn’t want her to leave my side? Well, as I’ve discovered since last week, her feelings for me aren’t unrequited, at the very least… I was just an idiot who couldn’t recognize what was happening between us.
I feel like I need to get on bended knee and apologize to Georgia for what I’ve done to her. She’s stayed faithfully at my side, waiting for something that she didn’t know was ever going to happen. She’s extremely patient, I’ll say that.
Or maybe she was just like me, unable to tear herself away. How many times have I wondered, over the years, why she put so much effort into Lily and I? How many times have I considered telling her that she needed to do more for herself and that she needed to worry more about herself? Selfishly, I only did so a handful of times. But not once did I ever say to her “you need to leave us”.
Now I know why I couldn’t do that. Now I know why she wouldn’t have left even if I ask. I sigh. I can’t work out whether the relationship between Georgia and I is healthy or not. If I consider the way we’ve clung to each other yet never spoken about our feelings, it doesn’t feel healthy at all.
So, what do I do now?
“Don’t run.”
Every part of me wants to run. She’s right, this is huge and terrifying. Somehow, these enormous feelings have crept over me without my knowledge, and I know that everything is going to change because of them. I’m not ready for everything to change.
But I also need to decide what’s more important to me right now. My nice, stable life with Georgia as my friend, spending my days worrying over Lily and how to provide for her – a life I’m not sure we can go back to after this? Or risk everything to give both Georgia and I what we appear to want? I would be putting our friendship, our hearts and everything I’ve been so terrified of losing on the line.
Is it worth it?
I inhale deeply. I don’t know if it is. Maybe that’s my deep-seated problems talking right now, but I don’t know how to imagine a life where I give myself so wholly to someone else again. I already did that, and she abandoned me.
But Georgia is Georgia. And she’s already proved that abandonment from her is not going to happen. She’s apparently been in love with me for thirteen fucking years, and not once did she ever leave me, despite my feigned disinterest.
So…my comfort or Georgia?
I look up at the roof of my car and smile. In the end, it isn’t really a competition, when it comes down to it. There’s only one answer to that question.
Georgia wins every time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Georgia
I open my eyes groggily to the sounds outside the door. I’m alone in bed, but I can hear Ethan’s voice elsewhere in the house, as well as Lily’s. I raise my head slightly to look at the clock. It’s almost school time, so Ethan must be getting ready to take her.
Does he have work? I can see his work clothes on the chair by the wall, so he isn’t dressed for work just yet. I don’t have work either; Mondays are normally my days off, unless something huge comes up. Well, more particularly, Mondays are meant to be research days.
I don’t feel much like researching, though. There’s something worrying about waking up alone, even if I know why I have. It makes dread curl in the pit of my stomach.
Last night, I was hopeful that things would work out. But now we’ve both slept and Ethan is already awake. He’s had time to think about everything. Has he changed his mind?
Suddenly, I see the door handle turn. I close my eyes quickly as the door swings open with a tiny creak. I can almost feel Ethan’s eyes on me. He’s checking on me, perhaps seeing if I’m awake. A moment later, the door closes again and I hear him walking away.
I’m not ready to hear his thoughts just yet.
Besides, it’s not like he can just run away. I’m in his house, so he’s going to have to come back eventually. I curl up around the pillow and relax.
I just need to give him a moment, is all. He can take Lily to school, have some time to himself, and then talk to him when he returns. We can decide where we stand then.
And no interfering with the decision he makes, this time, I tell myself severely. Even if he decides that a relationship won’t work out right now, that’s his decision.
Even if it will definitely hurt so much that I won’t be able to stay.
I sigh. At least I have that city job waiting if everything goes wrong. My boss has been extraordinarily patient with me, but I need to make a decision very soon. If everything goes south between Ethan and I…then a little distance between us will be just what we both need, I think.
Finally, I hear Lily and Ethan leave in the old, little car that he bought when Lily was born so he could take her places; despite how Lily has started to beg in the last year, he refuses to put her on his motorbike until she’s much older. Only when the sound of the spluttering car fades away do I sit up and swing my legs out of bed.
I grab a robe out of Ethan’s cupboard. It’s much too big for me, and I recognize it as the one I bought him the other month when he was sick. It smells of detergent, which means he hasn’t worn it since he washed it when he got better. There’s also that faint, musky smell that reminds me of him, so I wrap it around myself and leave the room, heading to the kitchen.
I get down two mugs and turn the kettle on. We’re going to need lots of coffee to get through this conversation, I think.
There’s a fine tremble going through my body. I’m nervous, I realize. And why shouldn’t I be? Everything I’ve ever wanted is on the line here. If Ethan returns and claims that he doesn’t want me enough to risk everything for me, it will shatter me, even if I’ll understand why.
Slowly, the minutes tick by. I end up making coffee for myself and migrating to the table, warming my cold hands with the china. I glance up at the clock. Shouldn’t Ethan have returned by now?
Maybe he’s not going to return, after all? He could have gone to see Kyle or Grant to try and avoid me for a little longer. He’s probably just as anxious as I am, though for vastly different reasons. I glance at my phone, which I’ve placed on the table. Maybe I should call him and ask him to come home. After all, neither of us can avoid this forever.
Then I hear his car, the distinct roar of the old engine shattering the silence. I leap to my feet and turn the kettle on again, dumping my cooling coffee down the sink so I can make another one.
By the time Ethan comes inside, I’m sitting at the table again, one hot cup of coffee in front of me and another in front of an empty chair. Ethan freezes in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Coffee?” I ask as calmly
as I can.
Ethan clears his throat and sits down.
“Thanks,” he says.
I don’t know how to start this conversation. I turn my coffee in my hands. What would be the right thing to say here? Maybe ask him how he feels? Beg him? No, that’s interfering with whatever decision he wants to make…
“You win,” Ethan says.
I look up sharply, surprised.
“What?” I ask.
Ethan gives me a smile.
“I weighed it all up,” he explains. “I realized that it would be so much easier to ignore any of this and go back to the way things were.”
My heart drops.
“But then I thought about what was more important,” Ethan continues. “You or that comfortable life.” His eyes meet mine, intense and determined. “You win.”
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s saying. My breath catches and tears pool in my eyes. He’s telling me that I’m more important to him than the comfort he’s built around himself because he was too scared to put his feelings on the line.
“I trust you more than anyone else in the world,” Ethan says quietly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next. But I think I want to find out.”
He reaches out and I blindly clasp his hand. I can’t believe that this is really happening. For all my hope, there’s a large part of me that was absolutely certain that everything would go wrong. I hadn’t really believed that Ethan would choose me when he’s spent over ten years carefully crafting all those walls around his heart to keep everyone out.
Yet he has. He’s sitting here, smiling at me, telling me that I’m more important that his fear. His hand, the one I’m holding, is trembling slightly and I know this is huge for him.
But he chose me anyway.
Ethan reaches out and brushes away the tear that spills down my cheek. I’m smiling widely, but I can’t help it.
Please don’t be dreaming. And if I am, don’t ever wake me up.
Ethan leans in. I meet him halfway and our lips press together. Ethan’s tongue darts out, requesting entrance, and our tongues tangle together lazily. It’s a slow, deep kiss, and I pour everything into it, my happiness and my longing and even my incredulous shock that this is happening. In return, I feel his nerves and his determination and my importance to him, so important that he’ll break everything to give me a chance.
