Stubborn Love (16 page)

Eight months ago – Jared

“Jared,” Luke says to me
as he walks into the kitchen.

I turn and look at him.
“Yeah?”

“I need to tell you
something,” he says. He looks nervous as fuck and I haven’t got the slightest
idea what this is about.

“Okay.”

“Mia’s coming into town
this weekend,” he says, running his hand over his head. “But she’s
gonna
stay somewhere else, didn’t want to make it
uncomfortable or whatever by staying here.”

It’s like a punch in the
gut, a hard, fast one that you don’t see coming but which leaves you completely
breathless and doubled over in pain. Maybe a kick to the balls actually, that
would be closer to the truth about how I’m feeling right now. I don’t know if
it’s the idea that Mia is going to be in Boston again, for the first time since
everything went to shit between us, or that she doesn’t want to stay here,
doesn’t want to see me.

“There’s something else though,”
Luke starts to say before I cut him off.

“She’s coming to Boston?”
I ask, needing to check that I heard him correctly.

Luke looks at me now with
a mixture of sadness and worry. I’m assuming he doesn’t know what happened
between his sister and me. He’s asked, but seeing as I have no fucking clue,
it’s impossible for me to say anything to him. I don’t know what Mia has told
him, whether she told him the things she seems unable to tell me. But if she
has, Luke hasn’t exactly passed on the message. Seems we are either both in the
dark about it or Luke knows the truth and is electing not to tell me. I’m not
sure which one bothers me more.

“She is, but she won’t
stay here, okay. I know that would be weird, awkward.”

“No, it’s okay. She should
stay here,” I say without even thinking about the words that are coming from my
mouth. I don’t even know why I’m saying this, why I would possibly want to
subject myself to seeing her again, not after everything that’s happened. Maybe
a part of me hopes if she’s forced to see me, she’ll actually be able to tell
me what the fuck went wrong between us. Maybe if she’s here in the apartment,
the apartment I once shared with her and she remembers all the good times we
had here, maybe I’ll be able to make her talk to me.

Maybe.

Luke is running his hand
over his head again. “You…you’re sure Jared?” he asks. “Cause I can’t imagine
that’ll be easy, for either of you.”

I force myself to look at
him, to ask the question I’ve only ever danced around. “Tell me something Luke,
has Mia ever told you what happened between us?”

He looks shocked. “No.”

I believe
him,
his reaction is too real for it to be a lie. “Well,
I’ll tell you something,” I say, wanting to tell him that I also have no idea
about what happened. “Mia…” I start, but the minute I open my mouth to say the
words, I suddenly can’t say them. I cannot bring myself to bad mouth Mia, not
to her brother, not to myself, certainly not out loud where the words will
forever remain, unable to be taken back. I have no fucking clue what happened
between Mia and me, and from the looks of it, neither does Luke. But that is
not his problem and it’s not his issue to deal with and more than anything, it
is not for him to think badly of his own sister. This is between Mia and
me,
it’s what I’d always said to her back when we were
together. I’d promised her that Luke would never be an issue in our
relationship because he was my friend and her brother. I promised her that it
would never come between us, or cause problems for us, or anything. And that’s
not changing now.

“Jared?” he asks and I
realise I’ve actually stopped talking.

I take a deep breath as I
utter words that I know are going to come back and haunt me. “Mia is always
welcome to stay here. Tell her she can stay.”

Luke just nods at me and I
nod back before I walk out of the kitchen and into my room, where I try to get
my breathing under control and work out what I’m going to say to the only woman
I’ve ever loved, when I see her again.

Mia arrives at the show
with Ash and it’s clear these two are already becoming friends. I’ve managed to
avoid her since she got to Boston, but I think she’s been avoiding me too. I
don’t know what to do. I want to talk to her, really talk to her, but I’m too
afraid that she won’t say anything back to me. Or worse still, that she’ll
repeat all the things she said to me back in Chicago. Hearing those words once
was bad
enough,
I don’t need to hear them again. But
there’s another part of me that’s still so fucking angry
at
her. Not just because of those words, all the ones she said, but more at the
ones she didn’t say. And there’s a part of me that’s scared about what I would
say to her right now. I’m angry enough that I could say something really
fucking stupid and despite everything, there are some words I don’t want spoken
at all.

So I’ve avoided her all
day and I’ve been at the club all night. I know this is the first time she’s
really seen us play, in a real, legit show. I can’t actually believe she kept
her promise and showed up and I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to think of
that.

Then again, she’s not here
for me.

The show is good, it’s
like all the ones we’ve been playing lately, solid. Despite all the initial
issues we had when we couldn’t work out who would do vocals, what stuff we’d
play and even just trying to find a time to practice, we’ve somehow managed to
pull together a band that is half way decent. It’s definitely better than the
one I played in before, and now that Luke is finally working normal hours like
the rest of us, practice and shows can happen more often.

Of course, that all
depends on what happens with this girl he’s so fucking crazy about. I glance
down at her and Mia at the back of the room. Both of them are watching us,
Ash’s eyes firmly on Luke’s, but Mia’s watching everything. As we launch into a
cover of
Stubborn Love
though, she
turns to look at me, and all at once, everything freezes. Suddenly, there is no
crowd and no bar. Hell there might not even be anyone else on stage with me,
because the only thing I’m seeing, is Mia, standing at the back of the room
watching me. I have no idea what she’s thinking, whether she feels anything
even remotely like what I’m feeling now, but for some reason I can’t look away.
The song, its lyrics have nothing to do with
us, no message
or whatever,
but it’s a song whose title pretty much sums up everything
that’s Mia. She is the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, but my love for her
is pretty fucking stubborn too. Stubborn enough not to ever stop, even when
she’s stopped loving me back. Stubborn enough to not let me move on, to let her
go and find someone else.

But I just can’t and I
don’t know if I ever will. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let her go,
even after everything that’s happened.

We play the whole song
staring at each other and the only reason I look away is because Luke comes
over to say something. By the time I look back, Mia isn’t watching me anymore
and I don’t know if I imagined that moment or not.

By the time we come off
stage, Mia is practically jumping up and down with excitement. I’m guessing
she’s pretty much blown away by what she’s seen her brother do tonight. As soon
as we walk over, she throws her arms around him. I watch them with a ball of
jealousy in my gut and when I flick a quick glance in Ash’s direction I can’t
help but wonder if she’s feeling the same. If only she knew how crazy Luke was
about her.

Mia eventually lets Luke
go before she turns and hugs Ben, and then Steve. When she lets him go, I watch
as she turns to face me, a huge smile on her face, her eyes alive, before she
takes two steps towards me and wraps her arms around my neck.

All at once I feel like
I’m going to pass out. My head is spinning with both the idea and the feeling
that Mia’s arms are once again wrapped around me. My head drops to her shoulder
and I bury my face in her hair. She smells amazing, she feels even better and I
can’t help but wrap my arms around her. They slide around her waist, pulling
her tight against me and all at once I feel a peace I haven’t felt in months.

“You were amazing,” she
whispers in my ear. “I knew you guys could do this, I knew it.”

Her breath is warm against
my skin, the sound of her voice like home to me. I squeeze my arms around her,
unable to speak. I don’t want to let her go, but I can feel her arms loosening
around my neck, her body pulling back. When I reluctantly pull back and open my
eyes, she is still in my arms and hers are still around my neck and I want to
say something, but I can’t seem to open my fucking mouth to get any words out.

“Are you okay?” she asks,
her head tilting as she looks at me.

I start to shake my head,
but then change my mind and nod at her. She smiles at me in a way that it makes
my heart skip a beat before it resumes pounding in my chest again. I wonder
what she’s thinking right now. Whether she has any idea what I’m thinking, or
how much I miss her. Why none of this seems to be affecting her at all. Does
she even think about me anymore? Or are her walls back up, protecting her,
stopping her from feeling anything.

“You were really good
tonight, Jared,” she says. “Really good.”

And then she shocks the
shit out of me by doing the unthinkable. She pushes up on her toes and kisses
me on the cheek, her hand resting lightly against my other cheek. My eyes close
again and I sink into her touch, breathing her in and never wanting to let her
go. But then she is gone, her arms have unwrapped themselves and she is smiling
and talking to Ash and I am once again feeling empty and lost.

I am no longer angry. I am
confused and I am fucking miserable. And right now, I can’t tell whether she’s
happy to see me, whether she misses me, or what.

But the only thing I know
for certain is that I miss her so fucking much, it hurts.

Today, 12:42pm – Mia

Jared still isn’t talking.
He’s sitting on the bed, staring up at his ceiling and I’m wondering whether
he’s ever going to say anything to me again.

As we sit here in stilted
silence, my mind drifts back to the phone call that was the reason I was coming
back to Boston. The phone call that was the reason I gave up Chicago. Okay, it
wasn’t the only reason, it was a contributing factor,
I
know that. But Jared would have moved and after this phone call, I couldn’t let
him. Instead, I was going to move, give up everything I’d worked so hard for
because I didn’t want to wind up in the one situation I’d tried so hard to
avoid.

“Mia, hey, how are you?”
Luke’s voice sounds through the phone.

I smile at how happy he
sounds, how different it is to before. “Good, how are things with you?”

“All good sis, is Jared
still with you or is he on his way back?”

I run my hand over the
empty bed beside me, wishing he
was
still lying here.
He’d be halfway home by now I think, glancing at the clock beside my bed. I’m
already missing him even though I didn’t leave his side for the entire
seventy-two hours that he was here.

“Yeah, he’s gone.”

“Did he tell you how the
band’s going, how we’ve started playing some shows now?” Luke continues,
obvious excitement in his voice. “You’ll have to come out and see us sometime.”

My heart constricts as I
realise Jared hasn’t told me any of this, well not in the way Luke is. I knew
they were doing better as a band, but not this much better. Not shows and
stuff.

“Mia?” my brother asks.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” I
say, wondering how it is that my heart can suddenly feel both happy and
devastated all at once.

“You okay?” Luke asks me.

I
swallow,
forcing the sob that I know is trying to get out, back down. I can’t do
this,
I can’t take this away from him. “Yeah fine,” I say.
“Just miss you guys, that’s all.”

“How much longer are you
going to be in Chicago?” he asks. “I thought you were coming back after the
show?”

I exhale, unsure of
anything anymore. “I don’t know,” I say quietly. “A couple of weeks, then I’ll
be back.”

“Are you okay with that, I
mean do you like it there?”

I smile, even though he
can’t see me. “I do like it, yeah,” I tell him, even though I am already
packing up to leave, knowing I can’t stay now.

“Good,” he says. “I’m glad
Mia, you deserve it.”

His words squeeze my
heart, force me to make the decision I don’t want to make, but know I have to.

“And you deserve this
Luke,” I whisper.

“What?” he asks, confused.

“The band, all the
success. I’m really glad it’s all worked out for you.” And I am, probably more
than he ever realises.

Luke laughs. “Well, we’re
hardly a success Mia, far from it. But it’s exciting that we are getting some
shows. Will you come out and see us sometime?” he asks, his voice pleading. “If
you end up staying in Chicago?”

“You know I will,” I tell
him, meaning it. “I promised I would, but it won’t be an issue, I’ll be home
soon anyway.”

“Good,” he says. “Jared
will be happy.”

My hand moves from the bed
to my stomach as the pain intensifies. Memories of his hand, of patterns traced
into my skin, of lips pressed against it, of forbidden words whispered into it,
all surface. God, why did he have to say those things, why? Why the fuck did I
have to get this job in the first place?

“Listen Luke, I
gotta
go, can I call you back later?” I ask, the pain now
turning into something else.

“Is everything okay Mia?”
he asks. “You and Jared didn’t have a fight or anything?”

My eyes close, the pain
intensifying as I think back over the last seventy-two hours and how incredibly
perfect and amazing and unbelievable it was. I’d give anything to be able to go
back to Friday night, standing at the airport, waiting for Jared to finally get
off that plane.

“No, we’re fine, great
actually,” I whisper. “I
gotta
go, I’ll talk to you
later?”

“Okay, if you’re sure
Mia,” Luke says, not sounding convinced. “Talk soon, love you sis.”

“I love you too Luke,
bye.”

“So that’s why you didn’t
take the job?” Jared asks
,
breaking the silence and
bringing me back to the present. “You quit your job because of the band,
because of Luke?”

I turn to face him, find
him looking at me with a look of complete devastation on his face.

And all I can do is nod.

Yes.