Stubborn Love

by Natalie Ward

  Mia just laughs again as she jumps up and grabs the controllers before turning to look at me. “Whatever, you making excuses already?”

  It’s amazing how quickly she has just gone from sad to happy. It’s like she’s flipped a switch and whatever was happening before, whatever she was feeling, is gone. I don’t think it’s real, I think it’s a distraction from what she’s seen upstairs and what she doesn’t seem to want to talk about now. But if it’s what she wants, then I’ll do it.

  Smiling, I grab the guitar she hands me, and watch as she looks through the games we have, before choosing something and loading it up.

  “You wanna start on easy?” I say to her.

  Mia actually snorts in response, and I laugh. “Only if you want your ass kicked even more,” she says smiling back at me.

  “Is that a challenge?” I can’t help but throw back at her. I’m loving that she’s smiling right now, even if I know it’s just a mask she’s hiding behind.

  This time it’s Mia who raises the eyebrow at me. “You up for it, pretty boy?”

  I laugh for real this time, I just can’t help it. The change in her is so fast and while it might not be real, I kinda don’t really care either. As long as I can keep her smiling, I’ll play along with whatever it is she wants me to. “Pretty boy, you think I’m a pretty boy?”

  “Well, you did just suggest the easy level, so I mean, I had to assume.”

  She is totally laughing at me now and I’m laughing back at her, feeling like an idiot because I must have the cheesiest fucking grin on my face at the way she is playing with me. That strange feeling in my chest is back now, too.

  “Just saving you the humiliation Mia, that’s all,” I say quickly, trying to joke with her and shake whatever this is.

  “Funny,” she says, leaning over to select the hard level. “I thought I was doing the same thing for you.”

  I can’t help but smile as she gestures for me to stand up beside her and take her on at the game. She’s like a little kid now, so excited, and it takes a second or two for the reason why to hit me. Of course, she never would have had this as a kid. Never would have played a playstation or video game. I wonder if she even had any girlie shit either. Because I know from the minimal amount that Luke has told me, neither of them probably would’ve had much in the way of fun stuff at all. Not because they couldn’t afford it, but because they wouldn’t have been allowed it. It makes my chest ache a little to think of what that must have been like for either of them. Watching Mia now, seeing how excited she is, how happy she looks, makes me wonder how either of them survived it at all. Survived a childhood that I now realise, was the complete opposite of everything I ever had.

  And it also makes me want to make this fun for her. I want her to enjoy it, I want her to laugh and forget about all of the shit that’s just happened with her family, even if it’s only for a couple of hours. And for that reason, I want to let her beat me too. A small victory for her after what must seem like an afternoon of epic fucking failure.

  She fires up the game and starts playing. Given I’ve been playing this game for years, I thought I’d have to hold back, go easy on her, but no. Instead, I find myself standing here watching in both awe and amazement. And yeah, I’m also kinda strangely turned on. I watch her complete her first challenge. Now I know why she selected the hard level. Fuck me, she can actually play, I don’t know how, but she really can play. When it comes to my turn, I pull out everything I’ve got. It’s nothing like playing real guitar, but I think the musical ear helps and I don’t hold back, using all the times I’ve played against my brothers, to try and beat her score. But it doesn’t happen, she still beats me on the first challenge and I’m kinda blown away right now.

  “You wanna keep going?” she asks me when our first songs are over.

  I turn to look at her, see the light that’s now shining in her eyes and I suddenly realise, I will do anything to keep that there. That she can completely kick my ass, in this game or any other game we have and I don’t care one little bit. It’s completely worth it to see this look on her face right now.

  “You bet,” I say, smiling back at her.

  We play a couple more songs and I’m pretty much rendered speechless. Alright, she doesn’t just beat me, she totally kicks my ass. I mean I have never seen a girl play Guitar Hero like she just has, and I play the game a lot. It doesn’t make sense, I have no idea how the fuck she’s done it, but she has. After about twenty songs I have to call a breather.

  “Conceding?” she asks.

  “No fucking way, Mia,” I say. “A drinks break, nothing more.”

  She smiles at me as she says, “Yeah, you probably do need to rehydrate any way, being how bad you just were, it’s really only an advantage for me if you don’t. You’re making it too easy for me Jared, really.”

  “How the fuck do you know how to play like that, Mia?” I ask. Maybe I was wrong about them having this at home. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s super impressive, it’s just not something I expected a girl to be all that into.”

  Mia just smiles and rolls her eyes at me as she says, “Oh we play it at school all the time. I’m kinda the current champ in my dorm.”

  I shake my head in amazement, knowing I have just been completely played by this girl. But the most surprising thing is how much I don’t care that I have. If this had been anyone else, either of my brothers, Ben or Damien or even Luke, I’d have been pissed and demanding a do-over. But with Mia, I don’t care; do not give a shit, because as far as I’m concerned, she can do this to me any time she wants to.

  “You want something to drink?” I ask her.

  She smiles and nods at me, and she is still that excited little girl who started this game. I’m starting to think that this might be the real her, this and the girl who cried in my arms upstairs. She might put on this tough girl exterior when things get real, but I don’t for one second buy it. Not now that I’ve seen what’s hiding underneath.

  I smile back at her before throwing my guitar on the couch. As I walk past her to go get us some drinks, she smacks me on the ass and I literally have to force myself to keep walking. Had it been any other girl who’d done that, I would have taken it as a total come on. Actually, I probably would’ve stopped, turned around and jumped her, right on the couch. But with Mia, I don’t. All I do is look at her smiling face, give her a quick wink, a fucking wink for fuck’s sake, and then keep walking.

  Knowing if I did stop, it really would be game over. For me anyway.

  Last night 11pm – Mia

  Ash walks back into the living room and hands me a beer, taking a seat next to me on the couch. We were supposed to be going to a movie while the guys are at practice tonight, but somehow we didn’t get there. I don’t really mind though, I enjoy spending time with Ash, getting to know the person my brother so clearly adores and who’s made him happier than I’ve ever seen him. That alone is enough to make me love her too.

  I’ve been here since Christmas Eve and it seems Ash has now made it her mission, ever since we talked at the Cape, to get me talking to Jared again. I know she doesn’t know the full story about what happened between us, how could she? Luke doesn’t know, not even Jared knows. But she seems to think that this is all completely irrelevant, and apparently tonight is the night she’s decided to start making things happen. I haven’t even told her about the bathroom incident, God knows that would only encourage her even more.

  The hardest part about it all though, is that I do want to talk to him and I do want to try again. I want it all; Jared, us back together, me living in Boston. Everything. But I can’t. Not just because of what I did to him a year ago, but for all the reasons why too. I’m not sure he’d understand me; much less forgive me for them.

  Ever since I’ve gotten here, we’ve fallen into the same routine as before. In front of everyone else, both of us act like we are fine, friends even. But the second we are alone, that all turns to shit; tense, awkward, hostile, shit
. We aren’t friends anymore, not even close, and it seems with every new time we find ourselves alone together, it’s getting harder and harder. The Cape was just about unbearable.

  “Have you tried just telling him how you feel about all of this?” Ash asks me, breaking up the self-pity party going on inside my head.

  “No,” I answer, taking a sip of beer. That’s true, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to talk to him, been desperate to actually. “I already fucked things up once before, badly, and I don’t know how to fix that. How to undo the things I’ve done.”

  Not that I’ve really tried though, if I’m being completely honest. I kind of made it pretty obvious to Jared that it was over when I stopped taking his calls and refused to see him anymore. God, the things I said to him, the things I did to him. I was fucking awful to him. I basically just screwed everything up and then hid, refusing to talk about any of it, to anyone. My friends, my brother and especially to Jared, the one person I should have been talking to all along.

  And deep down, I’m still afraid to try and talk to him now. Because I know what I did was wrong. I knew it at the time and I know it now, nothing is going to change that. And despite acting as though everything is completely fine, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t regret my decision or any of the things I did. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish everything could be different.

  But even though I want things to change between us, that I want to go back to how we were, I have no idea how to make that happen. How to undo any of what I’ve done to him, or how to make any of it right again. Back in the bathroom, I’d stupidly thought I could lean in and kiss him and just make everything okay. As though the fact that we’d crashed into each other and supposedly shared a moment up against the bathroom wall, would fix everything. What a joke. It wasn’t anywhere near being fixed and the longer I ignored the problem, the longer it would continue to stay broken. Maybe it would eventually be irreparable.

  “Maybe you need to make time, find a way. Remember what you told your brother, Mia?” Ash says to me now. “You just need to do something, anything to show Jared how you really feel, that you feel the same way he does.”

  I shake my head at her. “I can’t sing Ash, you know that.”

  I hear Ash laugh at me, try to explain that’s not what she meant, that she’s only saying I should do something like what Luke did for her. If only. How could I possibly do something like that? I wouldn’t even know where to start, what to even do. Ash and Luke are very different to Jared and me. They are new, a shared and intense attraction and connection that can’t be ignored. Jared and me, we are an old, probably broken, love story, driven apart by stubbornness and secrets.

  I take the opportunity to change the subject though, swing the conversation back to her and my brother. This is much safer territory than Jared, me, and all the shit that’s still between us. But even though Ash and I keep talking about all the things she needs to say to Luke. Those three big words, which she has yet to say out loud, despite it being so obvious to everyone, there’s a tiny thought, somehow planting itself in my brain and taunting me.

  The bathroom.

  How close we’d been to each other, closer than we’d been in so long. A shared hug a couple of months ago, nothing in comparison to what happened back in the bathroom tonight. I have no idea what came over me, no idea what would have happened if I’d managed to press my lips against his. Would he have kissed me back like he always did, or would he have pushed me away like the very first time? All I know is, given half a chance, I would have kissed him. I would’ve kissed him hard, and never stopped.

  “Mia,” I hear Ash say to me.

  “What?” I ask, refocusing on her.

  She smiles at me. “You haven’t heard a single word I’ve just said, have you?”

  I take a sip of my drink, nodding at her. “Yeah I have. You knowing how much Luke loves you. You telling him you love him too,” I say, hoping that really was the last thing we were talking about.

  Ash shakes her head in response, but she’s still smiling at me. I watch as she reaches out, grabs my hand again and waits until I look at her. “Talk to him Mia, just tell him what you did and why. I’m sure it’s nowhere near as bad as you think it is,” she says, squeezing my hand.

  I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

  “I don’t even know if he wants to hear it anymore,” I admit, my head falling, as I remember what really happened back in the bathroom. He walked away. He didn’t kiss me and didn’t let me kiss him. He let go and he walked away.

  I feel Ash move so she’s sitting beside me now, her arm wrapping around my shoulder as she pulls me close in a half embrace. “Trust me Mia,” she says quietly. “He wants to hear it, I know he does. And you should tell him, tell him before it’s too late and you run out of time altogether.”

  There’s something about the way Ash says these last words that suddenly has me paying attention. I don’t know if it’s the sadness in her voice or the regret on her face, but she speaks to me as though she knows what she’s talking about, as though she’s experienced a lost opportunity before. It makes me want to ask if she’s alright, if something happened to her in the past, but before I can, she speaks again.

  “You know, your brother once told me something, Mia. Something which changed a lot of things for me, changed how I look at everything actually,” she says squeezing my shoulder. “And it’s something I’m holding on to, something I’m never letting go of.”

  I look up at her now, curious. “Oh yeah, what was that?”

  I watch as Ash smiles at me, the same dreamy eyed smile she always gets whenever she talks about Luke. “He told me that life is too short to live without the things you want, to not to fight for the things you love… I know you still love him, Mia, and you know that he still loves you. You should tell him that. You should tell Jared how you feel.” I watch as she stares right at me without blinking. “Tell him how you feel Mia, before it’s too late. Before you regret it, forever.”

  I look away from her and stare at the blank TV, wondering how the hell she knows all this stuff, at the same time thinking, that’s possibly the best piece of advice I have ever heard. Ash’s words, so simple, yet so goddamn true, ring in my ears and I can feel that tiny little thought growing, spreading throughout my body as it starts to take on a life of its own. Life is too short and Jared is worth fighting for. That much, I do know.

  “You gonna tell Luke then?” I suddenly ask her, a dare to see if she really believes it, if she really believes her own words. “Tell him how you really feel?”

  Ash smiles. “As soon as he gets home tonight.”

  I nod now, as though my decision has been made too. I will talk to Jared. Really talk to him. I will tell him everything, explain what I did and why. I will fight to get him back, get us back to where we once were. Because despite everything that’s happened, I do still love him.

  I’ve never stopped loving him.

  I just hope he really does feel the same.

  Five years ago – Jared

  “Hey,” I say to Mia as she comes out of Luke’s room, closing the door behind her.

  “Hey yourself,” she answers back.

  I smile at the way she mimics the response I gave her three days ago when she arrived at my folks’ house. We’re back in the apartment in Boston now, but we’ve kinda adopted it as our thing and have been doing it ever since.

  Mia wanders around the kitchen, just looking at things, before jumping up and taking a seat on the counter. I try to avoid noticing how close she is, but it’s literally staring me in the face. Her butt is sitting right next to where I’m busy spooning some coffee into the machine. Her long legs are dangling, only a single step away from me and it would be so easy to move just one step over and stand between them, push them apart to accommodate my body as I press it into hers. I have to shake my head to clear the very real vision I have of doing exactly that, before I look up at her face.

&n
bsp; “Want some coffee?” I ask, gesturing towards the pot.

  “I’d rather have a beer actually,” she answers, hopping back off the counter and walking towards the fridge. “You have any?”

  I turn and lean back against the counter, my hands on either side of me, griping it tightly. “Yeah, of course, help yourself.”

  “You want one?” she asks, her head buried in the fridge now, her butt and those long legs of hers, the only thing in my line of sight.

  Fucking hell.

  “Jared?” she asks, when it’s clear I’m not giving her an answer, obviously because I’m too busy staring at her gorgeous ass and I can’t get any words out again.

  “Yeah,” I say, taking a deep breath as I force my eyes up and off her butt, so I don’t look like a complete pervert.

  Mia grabs two beers, pops the tops like a pro and walks out of the kitchen and into the living room, taking my drink with her. I have no choice but to ditch the coffee idea and follow her. She puts my beer on the coffee table in front of her and takes a seat, so I walk over and plant my own ass on the couch beside her.

  “Luke’s asleep,” she suddenly says, half turning to face me as she kicks off her shoes and tucks her feet underneath her. This movement and the look on her face make her seem so much younger. There’s only two years between us, but when she’s like this, she’s back to being that little girl she was when she handed me my ass at Guitar Hero for three nights in a row at my parents’ house. Only this time she’s not smiling and laughing, it’s the vulnerable, frightened version of that little girl who I’m looking at. It makes me want to wrap my arms around her again and comfort her, tell her everything will be okay.

  I take a swig of my beer, forcing those ideas from my brain. “How are you doing?” I ask instead.

  “Me?” she says, confused.

  “Yeah Mia, you. Are you okay?” I ask her again. “We’ve never really talked about how you’re doing with all of this,” I say, gesturing towards Luke’s room.