Struggle to Forever: a friends to lovers duet

by Lilliana Anderson

  I shake my head. “You barely knew me then. You barely know me now. I’m not worth your job. Or the drama being seen with me creates. Maybe it’s not affecting you because, well, because you’re you—they consider you the prize. I’m the competition. I’ve been insulted, mocked, knocked into…” I roll my eyes and look away. “I never imagined grown women could behave like this, but I’m not shocked. I’m just disappointed. All I did was kiss you.” A tear escapes and I swipe it away before meeting his gaze, expecting it to have softened with compassion. Instead, his eyes are crackling pools of fire and brimstone, dark and cloudy like the sky behind him. It makes me suck in my breath.

  “Fuck. Them,” he growls.

  “Excuse me?”

  He stands up and holds out a hand for me to take. “Fuck them.” I slip my hand in his and he pulls me to my feet. “I’m not letting bitter mean-girl shit dictate who I do and don’t spend my time with. Fuck that. I get manipulated enough by my own damn family without letting Beth and fucking Bianca have their way too. No. Fuck that. Fuck. That.”

  His rant hits me right in the chest. Simple yet powerful. Because that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m allowing the bullies to win because I’m too tired or scared to fight. When am I going to stand up and fight for myself? I’m so used to running to David that I never deal with confrontation on my own. We can’t orchestrate our lives so we’re always together. Sometimes I have to stand up on my own. He can’t always rescue me.

  “Listen,” Elliot continues. “I’m one hundred percent in agreement that we should behave professionally in the office. But, I don’t see why we can’t train together at lunchtime, maybe even see each other on the weekends. There’s no rule against friendship, Katrina. Hell, there’s this whole committee dedicated to getting us to hang out. Consider this team building. And if it turns into something else, we’ll learn to be discrete. Other people in the office manage, you know this. Don’t dismiss what we could be just because you’re afraid of the negative shit.”

  “And what do you think we could be?”

  A grin pulls at the side of his mouth. “I think we could be awesome.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Team Awesome, huh?” The sky crackles and a few fat raindrops land on my skin. “Well, we’ll be Team Drenched if we don’t get back soon.”

  Elliot looks up, flinching when a rain drop almost gets his eye. “Race you?” He cocks a grin.

  “You’re on,” I say, sprinting off in the direction of the office, laughing the whole way.

  Eleven

  Over the next few weeks, things calm down all round. I don’t go to Friday night drinks anymore and spend as little time in the break room as possible. Kayley missed me, of course. Being the self-appointed work-best-friend comes with its pitfalls when one of you is absent. But I make it up to her in other ways, bringing her a container of my mum’s delicious chocolate chip cookies to share with the others so I was there in spirit.

  “We can’t eat these without you,” Carl said from the library doorway. Behind him, the rest of our little gang huddled, ready to make the library their new morning tea space. My desk has never been so fun or so crowded. Who knew I could make actual friends all on my own? I love it.

  Speaking of co-dependant friends, David and I are back to our usual selves. He suggested last night that once our exams are over this year, it might be an idea to take a road trip up the coast for a few days of R and R.

  “There’s actually an Ironman Triathlon happening on Hamilton Island,” I said in response. “It’s the weekend after we finish so we could make a whole week of it?”

  He grinned and took my hands in his. “I think that’s the most perfect idea I’ve ever heard.”

  The fact he even made that suggestion means the world: David hates the beach. He hates the sand; he hates the sharp shells and floating seaweed. And he’s willing to spend the first week of our uni break there for me. He’s all kinds of special and I love him to bits.

  Training is going well. Really well. I’ve competed in my club’s first triathlon of the season already with another coming up towards the end of this month. I didn’t place, but since it was my first race after a season off, I was thrilled with the result. Baby steps, as my coach likes to say.

  “Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows,” I say to Elliot as we run through the Botanical Gardens at Wednesday lunch. I’ve fallen into a comfortable routine now: Mondays I have lunch with David, Wednesdays I run with Elliot, and Friday sees us in the gym. Of course, I also train on weekends and outside of work hours, but this is a happy medium, giving me time for everything I find important in my life. And Elliot is definitely becoming someone important to me.

  “My dad is about to marry a woman who’s only a couple of years older than me,” he states, his voice flat, eyes forward.

  “Ouch,” I wince. “I hope you didn’t go to school with her?”

  “No.” He laughs. “All boys' school, remember? Thank god. He met her through work or something. I don’t really know. I’ve only met her once.”

  “Was that to tell you they were getting married?”

  He sighs. “Pretty much.”

  “I’m guessing you don’t have the greatest relationship with your dad?”

  “You guessed right. Our relationship is primarily driven by the power of money. I live in an apartment he owns and pays for, so he thinks he gets to dictate my life. It’s fun. Really.” He chuckles but there’s no real humour in it.

  “Why don’t you just move out on your own? Take away his power.”

  “Because until I get a promotion, I can barely afford to live in my car.”

  “That sucks,” I say. Although it’s understandable. Sydney rentals are ridiculously expensive. Even out west. It’s why both my brother and I are still at home. It’s easier than finding a share house.

  “It is what it is. But what about you? What’s something you don’t tell anyone?”

  We run past a cool-looking bee sculpture covered in blooming flowers. Over the weeks, Elliot and I have discussed many things. Covering our families—his mum and dad divorced when he was young—high school—he didn’t fit in until he took up a sport and was suddenly popular with the guys and the girls at the sister school—and university—he attended Sydney uni, his full focus on law because ‘that’s how it’s done in his family’. We’ve covered all the normal ‘getting to know you’ bases, but are yet to delve into anything too personal. My walls have been a little high.

  “I think you know everything about me,” I lie, flashing him a smile. “I’m not particularly deep.”

  He laughs. “There’s a shitload of stuff I don’t know about you.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  He thinks for a moment. “Why did you react when I called you Trina?”

  “It’s what David calls me,” I reply immediately, preparing myself for the inevitable questions that every guy has—have David and I ever had sex?

  “And no one else can call you that?”

  “I prefer it if they don’t.”

  “OK,” he says, quiet for a moment.

  In my mind I’m counting to see how long it will take before the next question comes out. I know what it is before he says it. I get to the number three.

  “Have you two ever…” He hesitates and I can’t help but jump in.

  “Had sex? No. Anything else?”

  “Is there a possibility?”

  I shake my head. “If my best friend was a girl would you be asking me these questions?” I really hoped Elliot would be different and not ask me this at all. On our first run I told him David and I were platonic. And David was right there when Elliot kissed me. Twice.

  “No,” he says. “It wouldn’t have crossed my mind.”

  “Then why, when I’ve already told you we’re friends only, are you asking now?”

  “I don’t know: his level of protectiveness when we were introduced. The fact he has his own special name for you. The vibe
I got from him.”

  “He also calls me ‘baby girl’.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that any guy will have a hard time competing.”

  “It’s not a competition.”

  “If you say so.”

  We push on for a while in silence, questions hanging in the air like tiny tension-filled bullets. I don’t want this to become an issue. I don’t want to have to defend my relationship with David to yet another guy. After the disaster that was Christopher, I swore I’d never date a guy who couldn’t accept David again.

  “I’ve known David since I was nine,” I say, deciding that telling Elliot what’s behind David’s protectiveness might help. “My family moved a couple of streets away from him and I ended up at the same school, same bus. Over the years we grew close; brother and sister close, I guess. We’ve gone through all of life’s ups and downs together—other guys, other girls; broken hearts and fist fights—they all come and go, but our friendship is always there.” Up ahead, there’s a big gazebo that I gesture to. “Maybe we should sit for the rest.”

  “Jesus,” he says as we alter our course. “How pissed am I gonna be at the end of this?”

  “You wanted to know something no one else knows.”

  “Does David know?”

  I meet his eyes. “David knows everything.”

  Running his tongue past his lips, he slows to a stop, placing his hands on his hips as he walks back and forth, slowing down his breathing. “I’ve gotta tell you, Katrina, I’m jealous of the guy.”

  With a small smile, I gesture to the park bench, urging him to sit so we can talk. “They all were,” I say.

  “OK. Hit me with it,” he says, legs bouncing nervously.

  I sit beside him and place my hand on his thigh, stilling his movement. “It’s not as bad as you think.”

  “We stopped running and we’re sitting down. It feels pretty bad.”

  I take a breath as he meets my eyes. Here goes… “I lied to you about my scars.”

  One eye narrows slightly. “You didn’t go through a windscreen?”

  I shake my head. “I went through a sliding glass door.”

  “Did David do that?”

  “No. But he was there. He’s the reason I’m still alive.”

  Both of his knees stop bouncing as he angles his body towards me. “What happened?”

  “I’ve had three boyfriends in my life. None of them handled David well. They tried. Some more than others, but ultimately, jealousy got the better of them.”

  “Jealousy did this?” he asks, taking my hand and running his fingers over my scarred forearm.

  “His name was Christopher. He was charming, funny, and a fair bit older than me. I was… enamoured. I wasn’t quite nineteen and this guy who seemed to have his shit together was interested in me. He was one of those guys who seems to be everyone’s best friend. My parents thought he was great and everywhere we went, people knew him and liked him. Except David and my brother.” I pull my hand free and wrap my arms around my middle. “I should have listened to them.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  A tear falls from my eyes and I wipe it away, shaking my head. “I hate talking about this,” I whisper. “I hate being the victim in a story. It’s why I lied and said it was a cycling accident. I didn’t want you to look at me and see a domestic abuse survivor.”

  “Survivor is the operative word here, Katrina.”

  “I know.” I nod, blowing out my breath. “It’s still hard to talk about because you look back and you can pick out these things. These moments where everything doesn’t quite add up. But it isn’t until it’s too late that you manage to piece them all together and realise that his outburst wasn’t unusual. His control was.”

  “When I was at uni we looked at a few domestic abuse cases, and no one saw it coming until it was too late. No one expects that a person who claims to love them is willing to hurt them.”

  I wipe at my cheeks again, tears falling without my permission. “Yeah. It’s what I thought too. We moved in together after only six months, and I explained away his change in behaviour as teething problems. It’s difficult to share your space with another person, you know.” I clasped my hands together and shrugged, struggling to let my mind revisit those memories. “Then he became demanding, making rules about when I could and couldn’t go out, restricting my ability to see David. I thought it was just a bit of jealousy, and that eventually—for my sake—they’d learn to get along. I thought if he truly loved me as much as he said he did, he’d see that David was important to me, and that he wasn’t trying to steal me away. But he couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stand me spending time alone with another guy. He couldn’t believe we’d been platonic all these years. I mean, I even told him about David’s commitment issues and his inability to maintain a single girlfriend for over five minutes.” I looked up and smiled through my tears. “But he didn’t believe me.”

  Elliot sits motionless beside me, his hand resting on my thigh as his eyes remain glued to my face, filled with emphatic emotion.

  “We’d been living together about a month and David and Christopher had an argument. It was something stupid that triggered it, but it got nasty and Christopher banned David from the apartment. I didn’t want to fight, so I just made sure David was only there when I knew Christopher was at work. It was stupid. But I kept telling myself they needed time. I never…I never expected.” My hand flutters up to my chest as I struggle to keep my composure. Elliot catches it between his hands and holds it steady.

  “It’s OK,” he whispers. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s too hard.”

  “I…” I start. “No. I want to. I want to give you the chance to understand.”

  “All right.” His thumb caresses the back of my hand soothingly, and I draw strength from it.

  “On the night I left, David was over watching a movie with me. Christopher was supposed to be at work, so I thought it would all be safe, and I could spend some quality time with my friend.” I shake my head and swallow before I can speak. “Christopher came home from work early and lost his mind. David didn’t even have time to react before Christopher dropped him then tossed him out. Then…” I hold tight onto his hands, squeezing as my body shakes at the memory of those eyes, the anger pouring out. “He came at me. I yelled but he wouldn’t stop. It was like he’d gone mad, quit being human… He grabbed me by the back of my hair and ran—like I was made of nothing—slamming me straight through the glass sliding door.”

  “Shit. I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t remember anything after that,” I say, pulling a hand free to wipe it across my face. “The police report says there was evidence he continued hitting into me after that. David kicked through the door and reported finding him tearing at my clothes with the intention of…well, you know.” I press my lips together. “I owe him my life, Elliot. He risked his to save me, and the least I can do is make sure that any man I let into my life understands that there’ll be no choosing. David is my best friend. Nothing more. Nothing less. You accept him, or you walk away from me.”

  “Oh, Katrina,” he says on an exhale. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just say you understand. That you’ll never come between me and David.”

  He places a hand on the side of my face, running a thumb down the jagged scar before he wipes my tear damp cheeks. “I promise,” he whispers.

  “And you understand,” I whisper.

  Letting his hand drop to my shoulder, he traces the curved scar near my collarbone, letting his fingers feel their way down my arm, inspecting my scars, touching each one tentatively with his fingertips. “I understand,” he says, lifting my hand and pressing a kiss to the inside of my wrist, my heart skittering in response across my chest. “I would be protective of you too.” He presses another kiss against my shoulder, his lips lingering against my skin.

  “Don’t feel sorry fo
r me, Elliot,” I whisper, my eyes losing focus as I fight the emotions coursing through me.

  “I don’t. I think you’re incredibly strong,” he whispers, lifting both hands to cup my face. “Beautiful and powerful. A fighter.”

  Closing my eyes, an intoxicating wave of desire floods through me as I lean into his hands, not caring where we are, ignoring the fact we shouldn’t be touching like this in the open.

  I let him kiss me. At first I don’t fully respond, but as he gently sucks my lip with his, I part my mouth and let out a soft gasp, allowing him in. My body is on fire as his arms circle around me, and I move to sit on his lap, not breaking the kiss.

  Our tongues dance together as they explore the crevices of each other’s mouths, replacing the pain I feel from telling that story with something new and full of promise.

  My head tips back as he rains kisses down my neck and across my chest, leaving a tiny trail of fire in their wake. Our breathing heavy, I feel his arousal pressing against my own, causing me to grind instinctively against him. He moans and captures my mouth in his again, hugging me tighter as his hands caress the exposed skin on my back. My god, I’ve missed this.

  A sudden beeping brings us crashing back to reality. Panting, I sit back, and he slowly releases me so I can switch off my alarm.

  “I guess we better get back,” I breathe, laughing a little.

  His eyes are dark as he cups the back of my head and pulls me towards him, kissing me deeply again. “Now we can go,” he says when he releases me.

  I run my hand down the side of his face. “You’re going to ruin me, Elliot Roberts. I can already tell.”

  His eyes sparkle as he laughs. “Then consider me destroyed.”

  Standing, he holds out his hand to help me up. I do a quick scan of the park, hoping no one has seen us here and chance one last brief kiss. “I’ll go ahead like I normally do, OK?”