Stubborn Love (9 page)

Today, 2:07am – Mia

“I guess this whole Brian
thing explains why you snuck out the next morning then…” Jared says, his eyes
still closed. “Why you wanted to hide us from Luke so much?”

I don’t say anything; just
watch him as he sits there. His face is blank but I can tell he is thinking
about everything I’ve just told him, I know him well enough to see this. And of
course, he’s no doubt comparing himself to that dickhead Brian. I really want,
no need, him to understand that it was
nothing
to do with Brian and
everything
to do
with me. That
I
didn’t want to ruin
anything and I especially didn’t want to ruin the friendship he shared with
Luke.

Eventually Jared opens his
eyes and looks right at me, his eyes unreadable. I wait for him to talk, for
him to finish whatever he wants to say. Maybe he doesn’t have anything else to
say. I don’t even know what to say next. I want to keep talking, but I don’t
know what to say now.

Jared hasn’t said anything
for the last five minutes. His eyes are open and they’re watching me, but he
hasn’t spoken a word. And I’m getting impatient.

“Say something,” I
whisper.

I watch as he swallows
first, almost as though he’s trying to compose himself. His fingers are lying
loose on his stomach and I want so badly to thread mine through them, rest them
there with his. But I can’t, we are sitting too far apart, I couldn’t reach his
hands if I tried. It’s almost symbolic, if you were into looking for that kind
of stuff.

“So,” he finally says, his
voice hollow. “You were scared of coming between mine and Luke’s friendship, is
that what you’re saying?”

“You helped him Jared,” I
say, staring at his hands. “You helped him more than you’ll ever realise.”

“I didn’t do anything Mia,
nothing that any friend wouldn’t do.”

I look up at him now.
“Yeah, you did. You were a friend to him when he didn’t have anyone, a good
friend,
an
amazing one actually. And you did more for
him than I ever could.”

Jared sits up now and I
watch as his hand slides over the duvet and gently takes hold of one of mine.
Our fingers thread together, just like they used to, just like I was imagining
and it makes my chest ache with loneliness. “That’s not true, Mia,” he
whispers.

“Yes, it is,” I whisper
back, keeping my eyes on his as I take a deep breath and say my next words.
“And then when I met you, everything changed for me too. Changed in ways I
never even thought possible, in ways I never expected.”

“How?” he asks, his voice
catching a little.

I tighten my fingers
around his, the ache in my chest spreading throughout my whole body. “I fell in
love with you,” I say quietly, holding his stare and refusing to look away now.

Neither of us says
anything. We both sit here, with our fingers entwined and our eyes locked on
each other’s. I’m too afraid to say anything else at the moment, so I say
nothing, waiting, hoping Jared will.

Eventually he shuffles
closer and lifts our joined hands, wiping away a tear on my cheek that I didn’t
even realise was falling, with the back of his fingers. My eyes close at his
touch, at the fact he didn’t let go of my hand to do it.

“I did too,” he finally
says, so softly, I almost miss it.

We sit in silence, just
staring at each other, trapped in a moment that feels as though it could be
never ending. I’m not sure I could move away now anyway, even if I wanted to,
because there is nowhere else I’d rather be, than right here with him.

Jared finally looks away,
but doesn’t let go of my hand. “You are an amazing sister to him, Mia, you do
know that right?”

I flinch at his words,
shocked because it’s the last thing I expected him to say. I open my mouth to
speak, but he continues before I have a chance to.

“You really are, and I get
what you’re saying, I do, especially after what happened in the past with
Brian. I get why you’d be scared, but I just don’t think us being together was
ever going to ruin that, ruin anything.”

“No?” I ask, wanting to
know why, desperate to know why he thinks this.

“No, I don’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because you being that
amazing sister to him is just one of the reasons I fell in love with you in the
first place, Mia,” he finally says. “One of many. And I never would’ve tried to
change that. Never would have wanted to come between the two of you, knowing
everything…” Jared’s voice trails off now.

My heart thuds in my
chest, a single hard beat that almost causes me to lose my breath. “But it
would have,” I finally whisper, my voice choking on a sob. “Eventually it would
have, no matter how hard we tried to stop it.”

Jared is shaking his head
at me. “No Mia, it wouldn’t. I never would have let it, you know.”

My head falls as I wonder
how he could have ever stopped it from happening. I know it would have
eventually, and in the end it was one of the things that made me do what I did.
I look back up at him as I whisper, “How?”

He smiles at me, but it’s
not a happy smile, more of a resigned one. His eyes are serious right now, more
serious than I have ever seen them. “How?” he asks and I nod.

Jared closes his eyes and
takes a deep breath. “I never would have let it get to that point Mia, I never
would have let it break us up or fuck up anything that was happening between
us, between you and Luke, or even me and Luke. Never,” he says, his voice
earnest as though he truly believes what he’s saying to me.

“Why…how Jared?” I ask,
pleading with him.

I watch as he takes a deep
breath, as his eyes soften. I feel his fingers tighten around mine. “Because
you were the best thing that had ever happened to me, Mia.”

And right then, my heart
doesn’t thud, it actually completely stops. Right inside my chest, it just
stops beating. It’s almost like it’s stopped because I’m stopping time, hanging
on to this one thing and not wanting to let it go. I want to stay right here in
this single moment, where Jared can say words like this to me again after all
of the awful shit I’ve done to him. But then my brain registers the exact words
he said to me.

“Were?” I ask, scared.

Jared’s still looking at
me, his beautiful blue eyes holding me in their gaze. His hand is still in
mine, our fingers threaded together, locked in place. I can’t help but think
that this whole situation couldn’t get more fucked up if it tried. How is it
that I find myself
in bed
with my
former boyfriend, my brother’s best friend, the absolute love of my life, and
we are sitting here like this? There is only a foot between us, but right now,
it feels like we are miles apart. And I have no idea how to close that gap. No
idea at all.

“You are,” Jared finally
breathes out, kick starting my heart again.

Tears start to well up in
my eyes and I don’t even bother trying to hide or stop them. I can feel them
running down my cheeks, but I don’t look away. Jared is still staring at me and
more than anything, anything else in the world, I want this gap between us to
close.

I just want to fix this,
fix us.

I just want him.

Three
and a half years ago – Jared

“So I need to come and
sort some stuff out for school, was wondering if maybe you wanted to meet me in
Providence, hang out while I’m there?” Mia’s voice says through the phone.

I’m lying in bed, still
awake even though it’s two in the morning. I don’t really know why she’s
calling me so late. She’d texted earlier to say she would and I’ve been waiting
for her call ever since. Mia told me about two weeks ago that her transfer to
RISD was accepted. To say I was happy would be the understatement of the
century. Fucking ecstatic, over the moon, never been happier in all of my life,
any of those cheesy analogies would do. They all describe how I’d felt when she
told me.

“Of course I will, when
are you thinking of coming over?” I ask, sliding further under the covers as I
look up at our stars. We’ve spoken every night since Mia went back to LA, every
night since the night that changed everything. We haven’t really established
what’s going on between us, but we do talk about it now. We talk about what
happened six months ago; we talk about wanting to do it again. We have phone
sex to ease the frustrations of not being able to. It’s hot and I love it, but
it’s not a normal relationship. I don’t even know if it’s a relationship at
all. All I know is that in my mind, I am completely gone. I want no one else
but Mia.

“Well,” she says
tentatively. “I fly out in the morning.”

“What?” I practically
yell, sitting upright now.

“I land just after lunch
and I was going to train it straight to Providence. Wondered if maybe you
wanted to come with me?”

“Mia shit, why the fuck
didn’t you tell me earlier?” I say, lowering my voice so Luke doesn’t hear me.

I hear her exhale through
the line.

“Mia?” I ask again, my
voice quieter now.

“I don’t know Jared,” she
says. “I wasn’t sure?” It’s said as a question one which she sounds like she
hopes I have the answer for.

It’s my turn to exhale
now, relaxing my hand, which is gripping the phone as I try to ignore the
feeling that’s growing in the pit of my stomach. “Baby,” I say quietly. “Of
course I’ll come with you, you know I’m dying to see you again, well, a lot
more than just see you. Why would you think otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” Mia says
quietly down the phone, the faintest trace of resignation in her voice.

I sigh. “Mia, you do
understand how I feel about you, don’t you?”

It’s time to be blunt,
even though I didn’t actually plan on it coming out this way. But I need her to
know how I do feel and deep down, I want to find out how she feels about me. I
want to find out what the hell we are doing here. Find out exactly what’s going
on between us and where it’s all going, especially now that she’s moving here.

“No,” she says quietly.

I take a deep breath,
ready to throw myself off the deep end now, where I could crash and burn if
what I feel isn’t even in the same ballpark as what Mia feels.

“I’m not seeing anyone
else you know,” I tell her. “And I don’t want to be seeing anyone else. I only
want to be with you, Mia. Just you.”

I can hear rustling as
though Mia’s shifting around, maybe getting comfortable in bed. “Really?” she
eventually asks, her voice barely audible.

“That’s why you’re calling
me so late, isn’t it?” I ask her now. “Cause you didn’t know where we stood?”

“Maybe,” she whispers.

“Baby,” I breathe out.

Neither of us says
anything for a minute or two. It’s not an uncomfortable silence, just a
silence. I’m looking at the stars on my ceiling, wishing Mia was lying here
next to me and trying to ignore that little seed of dread that’s lying in wait
in my stomach. Given half a chance I know it could turn into something more.

I hear her exhale. “I’m
not seeing anyone else either,” she eventually says.

I smile now. “Well then, I
guess that means we’re only seeing each other, doesn’t it,” I say, hoping she
understands exactly what I’m trying to tell her.

“Yeah,” she says and I can
hear the faintest trace of a smile in her voice.

“And you know what else that
means?” I ask, figuring I may as well just go all out and say it now.

“No.”

I feel my stomach clench
as I ready myself to say the words I’ve been holding back for so long. I have
no fucking clue what’s really going on between Mia and me. All I know is that I
want her, really want her. And I want her as in long-term, might be falling
crazy in love with her,
want
her. I think she feels
the same way, well, I really fucking hope she does.

The problem is, this thing
we’ve got going on right now, is just that, a thing. It’s undefinable because
although nobody else knows about us, we don’t really know what’s going on
either. Neither of us knows where we stand with each other. We don’t even live
in the same city, we hardly ever get to see each other and it’s only now,
months later, that we’re finally working out that neither of us is seeing
anyone else. None of this seems normal. None of this
is
normal.

“What it means Mia,” I
finally get out. “Is that I’m really fucking crazy about you. I’m crazy about
you and I don’t want you to be seeing anyone else. I don’t even want you to be
thinking about seeing anyone else. I only want you to be seeing me, being with
me.” I exhale loudly down the phone as I finally get the words I’ve
been wanting
to say for ages, out.

Mia says nothing for what
feels like forever.

“Mia?” I ask, wondering if
she’s even still there.

I hear her soft breathing
down the line.

“Say something baby,” I
beg, a slow fear starting to work its way through me.

Finally she speaks, her
voice stronger as she says, “I feel exactly the same way Jared.”

And all at once, relief
surges through me. I actually laugh out loud as I realise, for the first time
since we started this, I’m finally sure about where we
both
stand. I’ve never had any doubts about my own feelings, none
at all. But there has always been so much more going on around us, and it has
made it hard to read Mia’s feelings. The secrecy of keeping whatever this thing
is between us, away from everybody else. The bullshit that brought us together in
the first place, with Mia’s dad, what happened with Luke, and all the shit she
still refuses to talk about now. And of course, there is the physical distance
between us, and never knowing when we’ll get to see each other next. But all of
that stuff, all of it, now slowly starts to fade into the background as we
finally acknowledge that what’s going on between us is real. That
we,
are actually
real.

“Then neither of us has
anything to worry about, do we?” I say
,
my voice more
relaxed now.

She laughs and that seed
of dread
starts
to disappear. “So you
wanna
meet me at Mass Ave station and we’ll go down
together?” she asks.

“Baby, fuck that, I’m
meeting you at the airport, give me your flight details.”

Mia laughs harder as she
says, “Okay, you got a pen?”

I smile as I reach over,
grab one from beside my bed and scrawl down her flight details on the back of
an envelope.

And although I know all
the things surrounding us are far from resolved, I feel a lot better about it
all. For the first time, I truly believe and feel as though Mia is what I have
always wanted her to be, mine.

Mia and I are tucked in
together on the Amtrak to Providence. We could’ve got the commuter, but I
wanted it to be the best for her, nicer. She’s folded into me, my arm resting across
her shoulders and it suddenly hits me that I’m going to get to do this so much
more now that she’s really moving here. Just the thought has me grinning like a
fucking idiot.

“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.