by Tasha Blue
As the days went by, and Anaya didn’t show up at his door to tell him that she wanted something more, and she did as she had done before and didn’t mention the night again, Owen had to accept that the night had been another one night stand they’d shared just to make each other feel better.
Owen didn’t feel better. He felt hurt and confused and more desperate for Anaya than ever. He was trying to be strict with himself and resist bringing up their passionate nights together in conversation and even trying to banish the memories from his mind. If Anaya didn’t want to be with him that way, then he had to find a way to remove himself from her because if he found himself being so close to her again without being able to tell her that he loved her, he was sure that he would go mad. It was the greatest torment of his life to have Anaya’s body, which was phenomenal, but not to have her heart, which was his true desire.
He ran faster and faster on the treadmill to try and make thoughts of Anaya disperse and he jumped a mile when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He slowed down the pace of his machine and came to a stop, unplugging his headphones from his ears and turning to see Lisa standing behind him. He was silent for a moment. He hadn’t spoken to Lisa since they had argued and he didn’t know what to say to her now.
“Hi,” he said at last.
“Hi,” Lisa said. She was looking good. She was as beautiful as ever and she looked at him with longing eyes and an uncertain expression.
“You haven’t called me,” she said eventually.
“I didn’t think you’d want to speak to me,” Owen confessed.
“I think we should talk,” Lisa told him.
Owen nodded in agreement and they arranged to meet in the sports café upstairs after he had showered. He headed to the changing room to wash off, got changed and then met Lisa at a table in the café. He waited for Lisa to start speaking first. She seemed to know what she was going to say.
“I’m not happy that you hid your child from me, but I can understand why you did it,” she told him.
“You can?” Owen replied with surprise.
“It would have put a lot of pressure on a new relationship and we were getting on really well,” Lisa analyzed. “It must have been a hard thing to bring up when you knew it could end the relationship before it began.”
Owen nodded. He was happy to let Lisa run with her version of events as it was less hurtful for her than the truth that Owen had lied to her because he’d been a mess pining after somebody else.
“I think we should give it another go,” she said.
“Really?” Owen replied. He thought about her offer seriously and wondered what the right thing to do was. He found himself in the same situation he had done when he’d very first approached Lisa to ask her out all those months ago. He was faced with the choice of either waiting helplessly and hopelessly for a woman who may never return his affections and would more than likely return to her long term boyfriend or try to make a go of it with someone who was committed to him and desperate to move things forward. When Owen thought about it logically, he knew that waiting around for Anaya when she’d never shown any interest in him asides from a couple of nights in the bedroom when she was feeling low, was not going to help him find love or any of the other things he was looking for in his life. It was difficult and painful for him to accept that Anaya was his best friend and the mother of his child, but had no romantic feelings for him, but Owen knew that if he kept turning away from people who did want to be with him then he was destined to find himself alone.
There was no better choice than Lisa for the role. They got on well and she understood the situation. He wouldn’t have to meet someone new and explain all over again how he had gotten his best friend pregnant. Lisa was here and ready to forgive him and they’d already spent a year as a couple. If Owen was going to do his best to move on from Anaya, then Lisa was the best person to move on with.
“I’d like that,” he told her.
Starting a relationship with Lisa again was that easy. As if the last week had never happened, he and Lisa returned to their former manner of doing things. He would go for jogs with her in the morning and share a drink in the café and they’d spend weekend afternoons doing something sporty together. They returned to watching movies on quiet evenings and catching up with each other about their days. To all intents and purposes they had a relationship, but Owen felt a deep dissatisfaction with the arrangement.
He really wanted to have feelings for Lisa. He knew that the sensible thing to do was to invest his emotions in somebody who wanted to be with him rather than giving them all to a woman who had never looked at him in a romantic way until she found herself alone. Yet, he couldn’t quite make himself feel for Lisa what he felt so naturally with Anaya, no matter how hard he tried. Those butterflies which always rose up in him in Anaya’s presence and told him that he was near somebody he was mad about never rose up when he was near Lisa. When he had conversations with the personal trainer he’d sometimes find himself zoning out even when he was really trying to listen because his mind would be on his daughter and her beautiful mother.
It was getting more and more difficult to try and force himself to have feelings for Lisa when there was no room left in his heart to love anyone when his heart was already overflowing with love for Anaya and his daughter. He was using Lisa as a replacement for the woman he couldn’t have, and it felt to Owen underhanded and cruel and yet, at the same time, he didn’t know what the alternative was. He could either be with a woman that he’d never love as strongly as Anaya or spend his life alone. No matter who he chose or when, the woman he was with would always be the woman who wasn’t Anaya.
Lisa could sense that he was distant with her and her usual giggly self became filled with angry accusations and tears.
“You’ve been out with Anaya again, haven’t you?” she sobbed one night at his apartment. “You’re always thinking about her. I can feel it when we’re sitting together. Your eyes glaze over like you’re somewhere else and it’s because you were wishing you were with her instead.”
“That’s not true, Lisa,” Owen lied, trying to make his voice sound as sincere as possible, which was difficult when Lisa was practically reading his mind.
“I’m always going to take second place to that woman you had a one night stand with!”
“Lisa, you’d told me to get out,” Owen said defensively. “I just went to her to get advice from a friend. I didn’t mean to end up sleeping with her.”
Lisa’s brow furrowed in confusion and Owen realized why just a second before she tore into him.
“What are you talking about, Owen?” she seethed. “I’d kicked you out? Are you telling me you slept with her a second time?”
When Lisa had used the term “one night stand” the most recent encounter had automatically come to mind and Owen had started defending himself for a crime that Lisa had had no idea he’d committed until he blurted it out in the worst way possible.
“I thought we were done. I went there and things got heated,” Owen said meekly. “I’m so sorry, Lisa. I didn’t mean for you to find out like this.”
“You mean you didn’t want me to find out at all!” Lisa accused. “I can’t believe this, Owen. I kick you out for getting a woman pregnant and your reaction is to go out and hook up with the same woman. There is no way that we can be together now. It’s clear that you’re just settling for me when you want to be with her. Don’t even try denying it.”
Owen hung his head in shame because her words were true. It felt cruel when he heard them said out loud, but he hadn’t intended to hurt Lisa. He had been with her because he’d known that Anaya didn’t want him and he had tried so hard to have real feelings for Lisa. He had wanted to love her badly, but he’d only ended up loving her poorly. He’d become that jerk boyfriend that he’d always told Anaya to get away from and he knew he didn’t want to play that part any more even if it meant being alone.
“I’ve tried really hard to forget about her,” Owen
confessed. “Nothing is ever going to happen between us.”
“Are you sure about that?” Lisa challenged him. “You’ve slept together twice as far as I know. You have a kid. You’ve known each other your whole lives and now you’re telling me that you can’t feel anything for me because she’s on your mind? You can keep kidding yourself that nothing’s going on between you two, but it sounds to me a lot like you love her and if she’s letting you hang around even after everything that’s gone on then I’m pretty sure that she loves you too.”
“I’m sorry, Lisa,” Owen repeated. “It was wrong of me to bring you into all this. You deserve better.”
“It was and I do,” Lisa agreed. “This is over. Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Find a new gym.”
Lisa picked up her things and left. Owen was once more alone in his apartment and alone with his thoughts. Lisa was much more perceptive than either he or Anaya and Owen wondered if maybe she had picked up on signals from Anaya that he had missed. Was Lisa right? Would Anaya really be spending so much time with him if she was trying to make it clear she wasn’t interested? Would she have allowed sex to come into the equation a second time if she had regretted it so much the first?
Owen found himself living now in a constant state of confusion. He had no idea whether Anaya felt anything for him or not and as he spent more time with her and his daughter, his love for them became almost overwhelming. He’d give anything to know that one day they’d be together.
*
When Owen told her that he’d broken up with Lisa for good, Anaya felt she had yet another chance to tell him how she felt and yet again she didn’t say a word. She looked at Owen’s dejected and morose face and wasn’t sure whether he was sad for Lisa or sad for them. She tried to cheer him up with days out with Zoë and going back to their old ways watching DVDs and chatting away.
They’d been through so much together by now and they were both tired from the confusion of trying to figure out how they felt and wondering whether anything would ever happen between them. Now that Lisa and Jakob were both out of the picture, it was easier to relax and feel like they had time to breathe. They both stopped questioning the nature of the relationship they now had and just let it be.
It began as a bit of a formal routine of childcare and greetings in the first couple of weeks after Owen’s break-up. He’d been rocked a bit by Lisa’s words and was desperate to know if there was any truth in them and whether Anaya was hiding her feelings from him. He didn’t want another rebound affair see them falling into bed again and starting the whole process of questioning and doubting all over again, so he tried to keep his distance in the aftermath of his breakup so as not to tempt either of them again.
After enough time had passed that rebound sex was off the cards, things began to get back to normal. Well, as normal as things can be between two friends who have accidentally had a child. Owen stopped rushing out the door after his visits to avoid the temptation of Anaya’s alluring eyes and soft lips and began to linger for longer and longer each time he dropped by until they began to feel comfortable around each other once more.
There was no deceit now and no pressure and nobody watching. It made it easier to feel like they were friends again and as they began to talk and laugh and joke like old times, they remembered why they had stuck by each other for all those years. The truth was that nobody could ever take the place of the other and that all of their relationships with other people had always been in vain, because no relationship could replicate the trust and closeness between them. It had taken them both such a long time to accept that chemistry in a friendship could lead to love instead of disaster and the only thing holding them back now was fear that the other wouldn’t feel the same. The unspoken things between them stayed unspoken even as Zoë turned one and Owen’s practice entered its third year of business.
Anaya’s life changed one day when a person who was being interviewed by a writer for the magazine stopped by the offices for the interview and came to a halt in front of Anaya’s desk to comment on her dress.
“That’s stunning!” she had gasped. “Where did you get it?”
“I made it,” Anaya had said brightly.
“Did you design it yourself?”
“I was inspired by patterns from a forties designer and my mother’s heritage,” she explained.
“It’s spectacular,” the visitor had insisted.
The visitor had then introduced herself as the PA to the CEO of one of the most famous clothing brands. She took Anaya’s details and a few days later she received a call asking for her to come by the offices with her portfolio.
The visit had set off a whirlwind of events that saw Anaya becoming a permanent designer for the brand and her forties African fusion fashion hitting the shelves. Owen had been with her every step of the way and had gladly stepped in to take care of Zoë when she had been refining and amending her final designs for her portfolio and spending time darting all over the place for meetings and consultations. When she finally got invited to be a guest at New York fashion week, Owen had been the one to pick her up and spin her around and congratulate her a thousand times and it had all begun when he’d given her the perfect birthday present.
Well, the book was part of a perfect birthday present. The second perfect gift that he had given her came in the form of their beautiful daughter who was growing into a happy and loving little girl. Life was wonderful with Anaya flying high and Owen at her side and Zoë growing up happy and healthy. Neither of them had realized how good life could be until all their dreams had come true.
***
It was one night a year or so after Owen’s final breakup with Lisa that the two kissed again, but this time the timing was perfect. They were no other people involved and the kiss was not part of anybody’s rebound. It hadn’t been initiated during a time of stress or upset when one had been seeking comfort from the other. It had come in a perfect moment of tenderness between them when they had been talking together for so long that it had grown dark outside and they had read Zoë her bedtime story together and cleaned away the dishes and fallen down exhausted side by side on the sofa.
Anaya had laid her head on Owen’s shoulder as she had done a thousand times before and he had turned to her, lifted her chin so that she was looking into his eyes and told her something he should have told her many years before.
“I’ve loved you forever, you know,” he said.
The smile that had come to Anaya’s face had been overjoyed and sincere.
“I’ve loved you forever,” she replied.
They had said no more. Of all the unspoken things, these were the words that had needed to be said most of all. After that things just got better and better. They never discussed the nature of their relationship, but it simply blossomed like a flower that had been waiting to see the sun so that it could bloom.
They began to allow themselves to show all the hidden things and say everything that had never been allowed to be said. Owen told Anaya that he loved her every day and Anaya spent every evening with her head against his shoulder. Owen moved in so that their long evenings together spent talking and exchanging dreams never had to end and at last they were a family.
Owen never bought a house by the sea and Anaya never moved to New York, but they both built a new paradise together with glimpses of their dreams shining through. They vacationed by the sea every summer and moved to a house nearer to Anaya’s offices and bought just one dog. When Anaya was called out to New York, Owen would arrange for Zoë to stay with her grandmother and would hop on a plane after Anaya, following her around the world as he’d always vowed he would someday. His business went from strength to strength and Anaya’s name grew more respected daily in the fashion world. Their professional and personal lives were finally both on track and the secret to success in both realms had been finally being together.
It was Anaya’s thirty-second birthday the day that Owen proposed. He took her to walk with her in the park where they
had shared so many clandestine meetings back when their lives had been a mess and they had still been so desperately reaching for one another and he got down on one knee to hold up the most beautiful engagement ring that Anaya had ever seen.
“Anaya, I have known you my whole life,” he said emotionally. “I have watched you grow from a happy adventurous young girl into a talented and beautiful young woman. I have had the privilege of being with you at every stage of my life and I can’t imagine having a single meaningful moment in my life without you being there at my side. You make me feel complete and I have been waiting for you for so long. We’re finally where we are supposed to be and I don’t want to make the mistake again of not telling you that I am madly in love with you and want to be with you for the rest of my life. I am fully prepared to risk our friendship in the hope that we can have a marriage instead. Anaya, will you be my wife?”
Anaya had burst into happy tears and thrown her arms around his neck. He had slipped the ring onto her finger and she had felt complete. They were married just six months later and almost nine months to the day after their nuptials, Zoë’s little brother came along.
After all the years of holding back and holding on things had finally come together in the most beautiful way. Anaya had found someone who would value her dreams as dearly as his own and whose support had taken her to heights she’d never thought she could reach and Owen was with the only girl who’d ever made him feel butterflies.
The years that followed were calm and peaceful years, which were free from drama, questioning, and regrets. After all they had come through there was nothing that life could throw at them to make them feel any less in love than they did on their wedding day. After twenty long years of devoted friendship and companionship, they spent the next twenty comfortably growing old together and even when they were in their fifties and their children were grown, they still looked forward to twenty more.