Stubborn Love (10 page)

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.

Mia walks into the kitchen
alone. “Hey you,” she says as she grabs herself a beer from the fridge.

“Hey yourself,” I answer,
literally gripping the counter to stop myself from pulling her into my arms.

“So, thanks again for
letting me stay here,”
Mia
says as she leans against
the counter opposite me. I can tell she’s being a smart ass, the gleam in her
eye giving her away. Fuck knows where Luke is right now, but I want to kiss her
so bad that I don’t even think about whether I should. I just push off the
counter, walk straight towards her and press my mouth hard against hers.

“Jared…” I hear her
whisper around my lips.

I kiss her hard, fast,
desperately
. She moans against my mouth and my hands go to
her face, cupping her cheeks as I hold her to me, drinking her in. Mia’s hand
grabs a hold of the front of my t-shirt, pulling me closer like she’s not about
to let me go either. If only she realised, I wasn’t ever going anywhere.

We kiss like we haven’t
seen each other in forever, even though it’s only been a couple of months this
time. Mia’s whole body is pressed against mine and my mouth is on hers, my
tongue, parting her lips. She tastes of beer and Mia and I feel like I could
kiss her for days, weeks, years even.

A noise somewhere in the
apartment suddenly breaks us apart, both of us breathing harder. My heart is
racing inside my chest and I’m pretty sure hers is too.

“Sorry, couldn’t help
myself,” I say, grinning as I take a step back from her, trying to calm down.

Mia’s eyes dart around the
room, but Luke is still not around. I have no idea where he is or what he could
be doing, but I am eternally grateful for his sudden disappearing act. Mia’s
cheeks are flushed and I know she enjoyed what I just did, wanted it just as
much as me. When she finally looks back at me, I can see her eyes are sparkling
with amusement. I watch as she takes a sip of her beer before she murmurs, “You
are going to get me in so much trouble.”

I can only smile as I say,
“I hope so.”

For the first time in
forever, Luke isn’t working tonight, so my grand welcoming plan, which
essentially involves Mia naked in my bed, hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped.
Instead, the three of us have watched TV, ordered pizza and had some beers.
I’ve spent most of the night on the opposite couch, watching Mia and trying not
to get caught by Luke. In the end, I decide to go to bed, before either of them
do
. I’m not at all tired, but I’m trying to be subtle,
in a completely obvious way. One part of me is going to bed in the hopes that
Mia gets the hint and she comes and joins me. But the other part of me is going
to bed now, so they can just hang out for a change, so it’s not so obvious what
I’m really doing.

Actually, I’m completely
fucking whipped and I have no idea what I’m doing.
Idiot.

It takes another forty
minutes before I finally hear the TV switch off and the two of them start to get
ready for bed, the sound of a shower and doors closing. Another twenty minutes
and finally there’s a knock at my door.

“Yeah?” I call out.

The door opens and Mia is
standing on the other side wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a tank that’s so
tiny, she may as well not be wearing it.

“Can I come in?” she
whispers.

“Baby, you don’t have to
knock and you don’t have to ask,” I say. “Get your ass in here!”

She smiles at me and
hurries inside, shutting the door behind her. As she starts to climb into bed,
I point to her clothes, telling her, “You may as well take that off right now,
because I’m only going to do it for you, as soon as you get in here.”

Mia laughs now, before she
stands up straight and looks me right in the eye. Then, so slowly it’s almost
painful, I watch as her hands grab the bottom of her tank and pull it up her
body. My fingers are itching, my brain begging me to reach out and yank the top
off as fast as possible, but I don’t. Instead, I lie back and watch as my
beautiful girlfriend slowly undresses for me. As her arms lift up, pulling the
tank over her head and giving me the most amazing view of her breasts, I let
out a low moan. Smiling, she throws it on the floor, before sliding her fingers
into the waistband of her boxer shorts.
Then, slower than I
ever thought possible, she inches them down her legs until they are nothing but
a pile of fabric at her feet.
Taking two steps out of them, a now naked
Mia reaches out, pulls back the covers and climbs into bed with me.

I immediately pull her
into my arms, pressing my entire body against hers. We kiss, slowly at first,
but before long, it starts to get faster, harder, both of us desperate for each
other. I haven’t seen her for ages, and right now, I’m aching for her, needing
to feel her. As I roll her beneath me, I pause only long enough to grab a
condom from my side drawer.

“Wait,” Mia says, causing
my heart to stop at the prospect of what she might be about to say. “I’m, I…
well I started taking the pill,” she says nervously. “I know we haven’t really
talked about it before, but well, part of the
me not seeing anyone else
, also means I’m not sleeping with anyone
else.”

She’s blushing now and I
love it. A huge smile cracks out on my face as I grin down at her. “Baby, I’m
definitely
not sleeping with anyone
else,” I say, leaning in to kiss her neck. “I’m not sleeping with anyone but
you Mia, only you.”

I barely hear her muffled,
“
Mmm
,” as I set about discovering a whole new way to
enjoy being with Mia.